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THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY 



AND 



WORDS OF WISDOM 



FROM THE WRITINGS OF 



IS 



JOHN RUSKIN 



RDITBD WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

ROSE PORTER 




BOSTON 
T) LOTHROP COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



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i/ 



Copyright, 1887, 

By 

D. Lotiirop Company. 



H 



INTRODUCTION. 



The chief purpose of a volume of selections is, that one 
mind may thus be made to do service for many. With an 
author voluminous as John Ruskin, this is especially needful, 
since otherwise some of his richest thoughts would remain hid- 
den among sealed pages. For, while the company of thought 
lovers and seekers is vast, time comes to many of them so 
hedged in by the "must be" of life's work, their own re- 
search cannot even fill a brief space amid the pleasures held 
sacred for recreation hours. 

These busy people are the ones to whom this " Spare Min- 
ute Series " is cordially dedicated, and by whom it is no less 
cordially welcomed. Among them may be those who will 
ask, "Why, in this compilation, Notes on Art and kindred 
topics have been omitted ? " I reply, ' ' Simply, because they are 
the subjects I find most freely introduced in other volumes 
of selections from Ruskin's writings." Hence I have confined 
myself to his discourses on Nature, Morals, and Religion; 
gathering for your perusal revelations of the blessed wonders 
of sky and cloud, mountain and rock, trees, mosses, and the 
green grass, birds of the air, and flowers, and the marvelous 
coloring all these display, which in beauty of hue, and deli- 
cacy of tinting as far out-pass the works of man, as "the 
Heavens are higher than the earth." 

From Nature, it is but a step to the realm where mind and 
soul reign as King and Queen. And here you will find not 
only jewels of mental value, and morals of beauty and truth, 
but buds and blossoms too, of uplifting aspirations and sweet 
tender heart charity. 



4 INTBODUCTION. 

For verily, such treasures strew the pages of this author, 
as thickly as stars strew mid-sky when the night is cloudless. 
I wonder, will you take these "Thoughts of Beauty, and 
words of Wisdom " into your minds and hearts as types of 
the Spiritual light they emblem? If you do, full well I know 
you will find, like the stars, they shine in companies, one 
truth-beam swiftly kindling another, till at last they give 
place to the clear shining of the glad Hereafter, where there 
is neither night of doubt, sorrow or sin, for, " the Lord God 
Is the Light thereof." 

Rose Porter. 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



" John Ruskin. Born in London, England, 1819. Son of a 
merchant, from whom he inherited a large fortune." 

Thus the record reads, and, like all such records, the words 
stand as the suggestion of infinite possibilities. 

Possibilities, that in this case have rounded out into a 
rarely full life, and one in which the familiar prophecy, " the 
child is father of the man," is peculiarly verified. For in the 
aged man of the present, we can see the boy of the past, as 
plainly as in the wide-spreading branches of the oak, we can 
trace the outline of the sapling tree. 

Very charmingly Ruskin reveals this in a volume of remi- 
niscences just now being published by John Wiley and Sons. 

And for the sake of the vivid portrayal those early memo- 
ries give of growth from youth to manhood, I pass a cluster of 
notes from them on to you. The very opening page is a 
glimpse into his reverential heart, showing that even at well 
nigh " threescore years and ten " the remembrance of his early 
home and parents fill a hallowed place in his mind, and, there- 
fore, he tells us : "I write these few prefatory words on my 
father's birthday, in what was once my own nursery in his old 
house — to which he brought my mother and me, sixty-two 
years since ; I being then four years old. What would other- 
wise in the following pages have been little more than an old 
man's recreation in gathering visionary flowers in the fields of 
youth, has taken, as I write, the nobler aspect of a dutiful of- 
fering at the grave of parents who trained my childhood to 
all the good it could attain, and whose memory makes declin- 
ing life cheerful in the hope of being again soon with them." 

5 



6 JOHN BUSKIN. 

What an in-look, I repeat, this gives us into the simple, 
sweet-hearted nature of the man. And yet, from a subtle 
mental combining of rare analytical power and perception of 
isolated truths, that forms them into a reality of united force, 
and then, insists on them with a certain aggressive assertion, 
Ruskin has many a time by printed and spoken words called 
forth the bitter hostility of critics and connoisseurs in Art 
and Literature. Nevertheless he has won an abiding place 
among English scholars, and is universally acknowledged as 
the possessor of harmony and brilliancy of style, linked with 
marked eloquence in descriptive passages, that gives even to 
his printed words the flash of a vitality that illumines them 
with a glow of beauty that ranks him an artist in language, 
as well as an artist by the claim of palette and brush. 

And all this is hinted in his childhood, where it runs like a 
golden thread through the warp of the years. Catch its shin- 
ing in the following extracts, where of the dawning of intel- 
lectual life he tells : " I had Walter Scott's novels and the Iliad 
— Pope's translation — for my only reading on weekdays ; on 
Sundays their effect was tempered by Robinson Crusoe, and 
the Pilgrim's Progress. ... I had, however, still better 
teaching than theirs, and that, compulsorily, and every day in 
the week. ... I have to chronicle what I owed to my 
mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exer- 
cised me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them famil- 
iar to my ear in habitual music, yet in that familiarity rever- 
enced, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct. 

"This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal 
authority, but simply by compelling me to read the book thor- 
oughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with 
fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which 
never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses 
with me, watching at first, every intonation of my voice, and 
correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the 
verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It 
might be beyond me altogether, that she did not care about ; 
but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I 
should get hold of it by the right end. 



JOHN BUSKIN. 7 

" In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and 
went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse : hard 
names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at 
Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the better exercise 
in pronunciation; if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson 
in patience; if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there 
was some use in its being so outspoken. I had to learn a few 
verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, some- 
thing of what was already known; and, with the chapters 
thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I 
had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish para- 
phrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse : and 
to which, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound. 

" It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my 
mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and 
which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive — the one 
hundred and nineteenth Psalm — has now become of all the 
most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion 
of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it 
by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His Gospel." 
To this discipline, he continues to tell us, "patient, accurate 
and resolute, I owe not only a knowledge of the book, but 
much of my general power of taking pains, and the best 
part of my taste in literature." And surely it is in this early 
training we find the germ of the later development which has 
led lovers of Ruskin to rank him with David the Psalmist, for 
to him, as to the sweet singer of old, God's works are God's 
thoughts, and Ruskin thus becomes akin to inspired David, 
so far certainly as his views of nature are concerned. 

I would that we had space to follow in detail the continued 
record of his parents' formative influence, which he acknowl- 
edges time after time, saying, "It was more important in 
youth, and far on into life, than any external conditions, 
either of friendship or tutorship, whether at the University or 
in the world." Later on he again refers to his mother's in- 
fluence, and " her natural purity of heart and conduct which 
led her always to take most delight in the right and clear lan- 
guage which can only relate lovely things." He recalls, too, 



8 JOHN BUSKIN. 

her unquestioning faith in the Bible, "which placed him as 
soon as he could think, in the presence of the unseen world, 
and set his active analytic power early to work on the ques- 
tions of conscience, free-will and responsibility." And so 
strong was this mother's control, that •' the ideas of success 
at school or college put before him by the masters were igno- 
ble and comfortless in comparison with his mother's regret- 
ful blame, or simple praise." She must have been a some- 
what stern woman, and though deeply religious, in bondage 
to some extent too, to the " letter of the law." This we see in 
her government of the child who Avhen not more than five 
years old, had already learned "not to want what he was 
never permitted to hope or imagine the possession of," and 
who " had attained serene and secure methods of life and mo- 
tion ; and could pass his days contentedly in tracing the squares 
and comparing the colors of the carpet, examining the knots 
in the wood of the floor, or counting the bricks in the oppo- 
site houses." Thus it was that in the days of almost infancy 
his life-long habits of observation began — till so keen grew 
the faculty that not the least line in art, or object in nature, 
escaped his notice. 

We have dwelt long on his mother's influence. What of 
the father's? Ruskin tells us "he had so much more con- 
fidence in his mother's judgment than in his own, that he 
never ventured even to help, much less to cross her in the 
conduct of his education." Still, it was the father who be- 
came his guide in developing what power he had of imagina- 
tion, and early love for art, poetry, and romance. "My 
father," he writes, "was an absolutely beautiful reader of 
the best poetry and prose." And pleasant is the word-picture 
of the little lad and growing youth seated in his own " sacred 
niche, a recess beside the fireplace, and out of all inconvenient 
heat, or hurtful draught," listening, with the eagerness of 
an eager child, while his father read aloud to his mother even- 
ing after evening. "Thus," he writes, " I heard all the 
Shakespeare comedies and historical plays again and again — 
all Scott; and all Don Quixote, at which I could then laugh to 
ecstasy, now, it is one of the saddest, and, in some things, 
most offensive of books to me." 



JOHN RUSKW. 9 

It was the father too, who about the beginning of the teen- 
period began to read him pages from Byron — who became 
for a time the youth's master in verse, as Turner was in color. 

But we must not linger over these reminiscences, pleasant 
though their story is, and yet, I would fain note the child's 
delight in the mid-summer holiday tour, when seated between 
father and mother in the old-time travelling chariot, his hori- 
zon of sight was the widest possible, and when their road 
led through the garden-like counties of England, and some- 
times extended northward, even far as the Scottish borders 
— I would fain note too, "the first effort to express senti- 
ment in rhyme; the dawning love for engraving," and of 
such characters of surface and shade as it could give, and 
then the violent instinct for architecture, followed by the 
never abated geological instinct." All of these mark periods 
in his unfolding life — but none were so full as the hour 
when as he crossed the plane of the Rhine the " gates of the 
hills " opened to a new life, to cease no more, except at the 
Gates of the Hills whence one returns not." But enough — 
save the gathering up in his own words, "what advantage 
and mischief by the chances of life up to seven years old had 
been irrevocably determined." " I will first count my bless- 
ings," he writes, "as a not unwise friend once recommended 
me to do, continually ; whereas I have a bad trick of always 
numbering the thorns in my fingers, and not the bones in them. 
And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been 
taught the perfect meaning of peace, in thought, act and 
word. I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once 
raised in any question with each other ; nor seen an angry, 
or even slightly hurt or offended glance in the eyes of either. 
I had never heard a servant scolded ; I had never seen a mo- 
ment's trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor any- 
thing whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due time. 
I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety. ... I 
had never done any wrong that I knew of — beyond occa- 
sionally delaying the commitment to heart of some improving 
sentence, that I might watch a wasp on the window-pane, or 
a bird in the cherry-tree ; and I had never seen any grief. 



10 JOHN BUSKIN. 

" Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the 
perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. 
I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply 
as a ship her helm ; not only without idea of resistance, but 
receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, a 
helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the 
law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith was soon 
complete ; nothing was ever promised me that was not given ; 
nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and noth- 
ing ever told me that was not true. Peace, obedience, faith ; 
these three for chief good; next to these, the habit of fixed 
attention with both eyes and mind, this being the main prac- 
tical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini to say of me, a year 
or two before his death, that I had ' the most analytic mind 
in Europe.' 

' ' Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily 
senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comforts, 
or except in caref ulest restriction, fruit ; and by fine prepara- 
tion of what food was given me. Such I esteem the main 
blessings of my childhood ; — next let me count the equally 
dominant calamities. 

" First, that I had nothing to love. My parents were — in a 
sort — visible powers of nature to me, no more loved than the 
sun and the moon ; only I should have been annoyed and puz- 
zled if either of them had gone out; (how much, now, when 
both are darkened !) — Still less did I love God ; not that I had 
any quarrel with Him, or fear of Him ; but simply found what 
people told me was His service, disagreeable : and what peo- 
ple told me was His book, not entertaining. I had no com- 
panions to quarrel with, neither; nobody to assist, and nobody 
to thank. Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything for 
me, but what it was their duty to do. . . . The evil con- 
sequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have 
been expected, that I grew up selfish or unaffectionate ; but 
that, when affection did come, it came with violence utterly 
rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who never before 
had anything to manage. 

" For second of chief calamities, I had nothing to endure. 



JOHN BUSKIN. 11 

Danger or pain of any kind I knew not ; my strength was 
never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage never 
fortified. 

' ' Thirdly, I was taught no precision nor etiquette of man- 
ners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I 
remained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without 
shyness ; but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew 
conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social dis- 
cipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, 
dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accom- 
plishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behavior. Lastly, 
and chief of evils, my judgment of right and wrong, and 
powers of independent action were left entirely undeveloped ; 
because the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. 
Children should have their times of being off duty, like sol- 
diers ; and when once the obedience, if required is certain, the 
little creature should be very early put for periods of prac- 
tice in complete command of itself ; set on the barebacked 
horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. 
But the ceaseless authority exercised over my youth left me, 
when cast out at last into the world, unable for some time to 
do more than drift with its vortices. 

" My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenor of my 
education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal 
and too luxurious ; leaving my character, at the most import- 
ant moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not dis- 
ciplined, and only by protection innocent, instead of by prac- 
tice virtuous." 

And now, one more note and we bid farewell to Ruskin's 
own analysis of the impression left by childhood's experience 
on manhood. 

" I was different, be it once more said, from other children, 
even of my own type, not so much in the actual nature of 
the feeling, but in the mixture of it. I had, in my little clay 
pitcher, vialfuls, as it were, of Wordsworth's reverence, 
Shelley's sensitiveness, Turner's accuracy, all in one. A snow- 
drop was to me as to Wordsworth, part of the Sermon on the 
Mount : but I never should have written sonnets to the celan- 



12 JOHN BUSKIN. 

dine, because it was of coarse yellow, and imperfect form. 
With Shelley, I loved blue sky and blue eyes, but never in the 
least confused the heavens with my own poor little Psychid- 
ion. And the reverence and passion were alike kept in their 
places by the constructive Turnerian element. And I did not 
weary myself in wishing that a daisy could see the beauty of 
its shadow, but in trying to draw the shadow rightly, myself. 

" But so stubborn and chemically inalterable the laws of the 
prescription were, that now, looking back from 1886 to that 
brook shore of 1837, whence I could see the whole of my 
youth, I find myself in nothing whatsoever changed. Some of 
me is dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a few 
things, forgotten many ; in the total of me, I am but the same 
youth !".... 

That you may know something of the amount of work Rus- 
kin has accomplished, I copy the list of his chief published 
writings, and if you add to them his various efforts for the 
benefit of all classes of society, men and women, rich and poor, 
young and old, learned and unlearned, you will be able in some 
measure to estimate the mental power and heart worth of 
John Buskin. 

1843, " Modern Painters " — republished in 1846 in a greatly 
enlarged form, accompanied by a second volume, treating " of 
the Imaginative and Theoretic Faculties." To this, later on, a 
third and fourth were added, and in 1860, the work was com- 
pleted by a fifth volume. At the time of its completion the 
work had somewhat changed in character to a philosophical 
treatise on landscape painting. 

The contemplation and study of the most noted mediaeval 
buildings of Continental Europe inspired Buskin to seek a gen- 
eral reform in domestic architecture — hence his "Seven 
Lamps of Architecture," 1849, and "The Stones of Venice," 
1851-53, both illustrated by himself — as were the "Modern 
Painters." 

In 1851 he began " Examples of the Architecture of Venice " 
from his own designs. Then follow other architectural 
pamphlets, among them " The Opening of the Crystal Palace " 
and " The Study of Architecture in our Schools." " Notes on 



JOHN BUSKIN. 13 

the Construction of Sheep Folds," 1851, is a discussion of 
church discipline and doctrine, rather than on church archi- 
tecture. 

Ruskin was of course in full sympathy with the pre-Raph- 
aelite movement, claiming, as he did, that "the principles on 
which Hunt, Millais and their followers proceeded had first 
been enunciated in his own works," and in his pamphlet, 
" Pre-Raphaelitism," 1851, and elsewhere, he expresses his ad- 
miration of the new school. He has also published several 
courses of lectures to artisans and others — among them, 
"Architecture and Painting," "The Political Economy of 
Art," " The Two Paths," " Sesame and Lilies," " The Ethics 
of the Dust," "The Crown of Wild Olive," "Lectures on 
Art," "The Eagle's Nest," " Aratra Pentelici," "Ariadne 
Florentina," also "Elements of Perspective," "The King of 
the Golden River," " Elements of Drawing," " Unto this Last," 
"Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne," "The Queen of the 
Air," and many contributions to the Quarterly Review and 
other periodicals. "Mornings in Florence," "Proserpine," 
"Studies of Wayside Flowers," "Love's Meinie," "Deuca- 
lion" and " Val d'Arno," " Munera Pulveris," " Elements of 
Sculpture," and a periodical called " Fors Clavigera" and 
" The Lord's Prayer in Church" belong to his later publica- 
tions. There is also a volume of early poems, called, "Poems 
by John Ruskin," but of his verse-making it should ever be 
remembered it was confined to his youth, and for the most 
part dated from Christ Church, Oxford, where, in 1839, he 
gained the Newdigate prize for English poetry. 

In the matter of public honor, in 1867, Ruskin was ap- 
pointed Rede lecturer at Cambridge, and later he received 
the degree of LL. D. from that University. 

He was elected Slade professor of fine arts in the Univer- 
sity of Oxford in 18G9, and in 1871 he gave live thousand 
pounds as an endowment for a Master of Drawing in that 
University; in this year he also founded a Museum at Shef- 
field, to which he has since given part of his own valuable 
library, as well as art treasures. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY 

AND 

WORDS OF WISDOM. 



i 



It is a strange thing how little in general people know 
about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature 
has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the 
sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, 
than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in 
which we least attend to her. There are not many of her 
other works in which some more material or essential pur- 
pose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by 
every part of their organization; but every essential purpose 
of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once 
in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud 
were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, 
and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film 
of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, 
there is not a moment of any clay of our lives, when nature 
is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, 
glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and 
constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is 
quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our per- 

15 



16 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

petual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however 
far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this 
doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth 
can be seen and known but by few ; . . . but the sky is 
for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for 
human nature's daily food " ; it is fitted in all its functions 
for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the 
soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Some- 
times gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never 
the same for two moments together; almost human in its 
passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in 
its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct 
as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is 
mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never 
make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our 
animal sensations ; we look upon all by which it speaks to us 
more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to 
the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more 
from the covering vault than the light and the dew which 
we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession 
of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and 
too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a 
glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness 
and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of 
its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, 
and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. 
Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the 



TIIO U GHTS OF BE A UTY. 17 

forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains 
that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the 
narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon 
their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a 
dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds 
when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind 
blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, 
unregretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever shaken oft", 
even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is 
extraordinary; and yet- it is not in the broad and fierce mani- 
festations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the 
hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest char- 
acters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earth- 
quake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. They are 
but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can 
only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in 
quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, 
and the calm, and the perpetual — that which must be sought 
ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood — things which 
the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, 
which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to 
be found always, yet each found but once ; it is through these 
that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing 
of beauty given. ... I fully believe, little as people in 
general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky 
are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we 
could examine the conception formed in the minds of most 



18 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

educated persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently 
be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminis- 
cences of the old Masters. 

If there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable or 
necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which Words- 
worth has given in the second book of the Excursion : — 

1 ' The chasm of sky above my head 

Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain 

For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, 

Or to pass through ; — but rather an abyss 

In which the everlasting stars abide, 

And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt 

The curious eye to look for them by day." 

And, in his American notes, I remember Dickens notices the 
same truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge 
deck, looking not at, but through the sky. And if you look 
intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that 
there is a variety and fulness in its very repose. It is not 
flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent body of 
penetrable air, in which you can trace or imagine short, fall- 
ing spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled ves- 
tiges of dark vapor. 

" The Heavens declare the glory of God." What are the 
Heavens? There can be no question that in the minds of the 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 19 

sacred writers, the word stood naturally for the entire sys- 
tem of cloud, and of space beyond it, conceived by them as a 
vault set with stars. ... A child might therefore be told 
(surely with advantage) that our beautiful word Heaven may 
possibly have been formed from a Hebrew word, meaning 
"the high place." .... These Heavens, then, "de- 
clare the glory of God ; " that is the light of God, the eternal 
glory, stable and changeless. As their orbs fail not — but 
pursue their course for ever, to give light upon the earth — 
so God's glory surrounds man for ever — changeless, in its 
fulness insupportable — infinite. 

* * 
The account given of the stages of Creation in the first 
chapter of Genesis, is in every respect clear and intelligible 
to the simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of 
the second clay. I suppose that this statement is passed over 
by careless readers without an endeavor to understand it; 
and contemplated by simple and faithful readers as a sublime 
mystery which was not intended to be understood. But there 
is no mystery in any other part of the chapter, and it seems 
to me unjust to conclude that any was intended here. And 
the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being 
the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the 
only one in which the word " Heaven " all important as that 
word is to our understanding of the most precious promises 
of Scripture, receives a definite explanation. Let us, there- 
fore, see whether, by a little careful comparison of the verse 



20 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

with other passages in which the word occurs, we may not be 
able to arrive at as clear an understanding of this portion of 
the chapter as of the rest. 

In the first place, the English word " Firmament " itself is 
obscure and useless; because we never employ it but as a 
synonym of Heaven ; it conveys no other distinct idea to us ; 
and the verse, though from our familiarity with it we imag- 
ine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point or 
value than if it were written "God said, let there be some- 
thing in the midst of the waters, and God called the some- 
thing Heaven." 

But the marginal reading, " Expansion," has definite value; 
and the statement that, " God said, let there be an expansion 
in the midst of the waters, and God called the expansion 
Heaven," has an apprehensible meaning. Now, with respect 
to this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is in- 
tended for the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned 
reader only ; and that, therefore, the most simple and natural 
interpretation is the likeliest in general to be the true one. 
An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which 
the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth ; but I im- 
agine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was 
falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of 
the clouds from which the shower descended, without being 
able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words "Ex- 
pansion in the midst of the waters." And if, having once 
seized this idea, he proceeded to examine it more accurately, 



THO TIGHT S OF BE A UTY. 21 

he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed anything of 
the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases did in- 
deed most severely and stringently divide "waters from 
waters," that is to say, divide water in its collective and tan- 
gible state, from water in its divided and aerial state ; or the 
waters- which fall and flow, from those which rise and float. 
Next, if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of 
the word Heaven, and examine whether the clouds are spoken 
of as God's dwelling place, we find God going before the Is- 
raelites in a pillar of cloud ; revealing Himself in a cloud on 
Sinai ; appearing in a cloud on the mercy seat, filling the Tem- 
ple of Solomon with the cloud when its dedication is accepted ; 
appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel ; ascending into a cloud 
before the eyes of the disciples on Mount Olivet ; and in like 
manner returning to Judgment. "Behold, He cometh with 
clouds, and every eye shall see Him." " Then shall they see 
the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven, with power 
and great glory." While farther, the "clouds" and "hea- 
vens " are used as interchangeable words in those Psalms 
which most distinctly set forth the power of God: "He 
bowed the heavens also, and came down; He made darkness 
pavilions round about Him, dark waters, and thick clouds of 
the skies." And, again; " Thy mercy, oh Lord, is in the hea- 
vens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And, 
again: "His excellency is over Israel, and His strength is 
in the clouds." Again: "The clouds poured out water, the 
skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy thunder was in the 



22 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Heavens." Again: "Clouds and darkness are round about 
Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His 
throne ; the Heavens declare His righteousness, and all the 
people see His glory." 

In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable, if they 
possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them 
merely for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore grad- 
ually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The 
expression, "He bowed the Heavens," for instance, is, I sup- 
pose, received by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, 
having reference to some peculiar and fearful manifestation 
of God's power to the writer of the Psalm in which the words 
occur. But the expression either has plain meaning, or it 
has no meaning. Understand by the term "Heavens" the 
compass of infinite space around the earth, and the expres- 
sion, "bowed the Heavens," however sublime, is wholly 
without meaning ; infinite space cannot be bent or bowed. 
But understand by the "Heavens" the veil of clouds above the 
earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure ; 
it is pure, plain, and accurate truth, and it describes God, not 
as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing 
what He is still doing before our eyes day by clay. By accepting 
the words in their simple sense, we are thus led to appre- 
hend the immediate presence of the Deity, and His purpose 
of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the storm-cloud 
stoops upon its course ; while by our vague and inaccurate 
acceptance of the words we remove the idea of His presence 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 23 

far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor 
know ; and gradually, from the close realization of a living 
God who " maketh the clouds His chariot" we refine and ex- 
plain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive 
God, inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the 
multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature. 

All errors of this kind — and in the present day we are in 
constant and grievous danger of falling into them — arise 
from the originally mistaken idea that man can, " By search- 
ing, find out God — find out the Almighty to perfection ; " 
that is to say, by help of courses of reasoning and accumula- 
tions of Science, apprehend the nature of the Deity in a more 
exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of compara- 
tive ignorance ; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the be- 
ginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Him- 
self to His creatures should be a simple way, which all those 
creatures may understand. Whether taught or untaught, 
whether of mean capacity or enlarged, it is necessary that 
communion with their Creator should be possible to all ; and 
the admission to such communion must be rested, not on their 
having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their having a 
human soul. In order to render this communion possible, 
the Deity has stooped from His throne, and has not only, in 
the person of the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human 
flesh, but in the person of the Father, taken upon Him the 
veil of our human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own 
spoken authority, to conceive Him simply and clearly as a 



24 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

loving Father and Friend ; a being to be walked with and 
reasoned with; to be moved by our entreaties, angered by 
our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, 
and glorified by our labor; and, finally, to be beheld in im- 
mediate and active presence in all the powers and changes of 
creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is 
evidently the only one which can be universal, and therefore 
the only one which for us can be true. 

I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His 
own creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowl- 
edge and imagination it would be received by a simply minded 
man. ... I suppose the heavens to mean that part of crea- 
tion which holds equal companionship with our globe ; I under- 
stand the " rolling of those heavens together as a scroll," to 
be an equal and relative destruction with the " melting of the 
elements in fervent heat ; " and I understand the making of 
the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned, most 
magnificent ordinance of the clouds ; the ordinance, that as 
the great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, 
so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the height 
of air, and the face of the cloud answer the f ace'of the ocean ; 
and that this upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, as 
it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the fire, 
but now bearing fire in their own bosoms ; no longer murmur- 
ing only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, but 
answering each other with their own voices from pole to 
pole ; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 25 

through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleas- 
ure like the armies of the angels and choosing their encamp- 
ments upon the heights of the hills ; no longer hurried down- 
wards forever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless 
accumulation of the abyss, but covering the east and west 
with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the 
farther infinite with a vesture of clivers colors, of which the 
threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame. 
This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament; and it 
seems to me that in the midst of the material nearness of 
these heavens God means us to acknowledge His own imme- 
diate presence as visiting, judging, and blessing us. "The 
earth shook, the heavens also dropped, at the presence of 
God." " He doth set His bow in the cloud," and thus renews, 
in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, His promise 
of everlasting love. "In them hath He set a tabernacle f or 
the sun ; " whose burning ball, which without the firmament, 
would be seen as an intolerable and scorching circle in the 
blackness of vacuity, is by the firmament surrounded with 
gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries ; by 
the firmament of clouds the golden pavement is spread for 
His chariot wheels at morning ; by the firmament of clouds 
the temple is built for His presence to fill with light at noon ; 
by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed at even- 
ing round the sanctuary of His rest ; by the mists of the fir- 
mament His implacable light is divided, and its separated 
fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of 



26 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

distance with its bloom, and the flush with w T hich the mount- 
ains burn as they drink the overflowing of the day spring. 
And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to 
set forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, upon the 
throne of the firmament. As the Creator of all the worlds, 
and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot behold Him: but, 
as the Judge of the earth, and the Preserver of men, these 
heavens are indeed His dwelling-place: " Swear not, neither 
by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is 
His footstool." And all those passings to and fro of fruitful 
shower and grateful shade, and all those visions of silver 
palaces built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds 
and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and 
cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance 
and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words " Our 
Father which art in heaven." 

Between the heaven and man came the cloud. Has the 
reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? . . . That 
mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level 
and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if 
through an inundation — why is it so heavy? And why 
does it lie so low, being j r et so thin and frail that it will melt 
away utterly into splendor of morning, when the sun has 
shone on it but a few moments more? Those colossal pyra- 
mids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 27 

to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks 
— why are they so light — their bases high over our heads, 
high over the heads of Alps? Why will these melt away, not 
as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of 
twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains again upon the 
earth like a shroud? 

Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of 
pines ; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them, 
wreathing yet round them, and yet — and yet, slowly; now 
falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil ; now fading ; 
now gone ; we look away for an instant, and look back, and 
it is again there. What has it to do with that clump of 
pines, that it broods by them and weaves itself among their 
branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure 
among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or 
has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or 
bound it fast within those bars of bough? And yonder filmy 
crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, 
the highest of all the hills — that white arch which never 
forms but over the supreme crest — how is it stayed there, re- 
pelled apparently from the snow — nowhere touching it, the 
clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never 
leaving it — poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? 

Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- 
crested, tongued with fire ; — how is their barbed strength 
k bridled? What bits are these they are champing with their 
vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued 



28 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth 
smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. 
The sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, 
the dart, nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their 
armies? Where are set the measures of their march? Fierce 
murmurers, answering each other from morning until even- 
ing — what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace? 
what hand has reined them back by the way by which they 
came? I know not if the reader will think at first that ques- 
tions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I rather 
believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be 
understood by us at all. ' ' Knowest thou the balancing of the 
clouds?" Is the answer ever to be one of pride? "The 
wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge?" 

Is our knowledge ever to be so? For my own 

part I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I 
think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer 
rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they 
come to prove him with hard questions ; to which, perhaps, 
if we look close at the heavenly scroll, we may find also a 
syllable or two of answer illuminated here and there. 

# * 
The first and most important character of clouds, is de- 
pendent on the different altitudes at which they are formed. 
The atmosphere may be conveniently considered as divided 
into three spaces, each inhabited by clouds of specific char- 
acter altogether different, though in reality, there is no dis- 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 29 

tinct limit fixed between them by nature, clouds being formed 
at every altitude, and partaking, according to their altitude, 
more or less of the character of the upper or lower regions. 
The clouds which I wish to consider as in- 
cluded in the upper region, never touch even the highest 
mountains of Europe, and may therefore be looked upon as 
never formed below an elevation of at least fifteen thousand 
feet ; they are the motionless multitudinous lines of delicate 
vapor with which the blue of the open sky is commonly 
streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. 

Their chief characters are : First, Symmetry. They are 
nearly always arranged in some definite and evident order, 
They thus differ from all other clouds in hav- 
ing a plan and system ; whereas other clouds, though there 
are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet perfect 
freedom from anything like a relative and general system of 
government. The upper clouds are to the lower, what sol- 
diers on parade are to a mixed multitude ; no men walk on 
their heads or on their hands, and so there are certain laws 
which no clouds violate ; but there is nothing except in the 
upper clouds resembling symmetrical discipline. Secondly, 
Sharpness of Edge. The edges of the bars of the upper clouds 
which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest which the 
sky shows; no outline whatever of any other kind of cloud, 
however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate 
decision of these edges. Thirdly, Multitude : The delicacy of 
these vapors is sometimes carried into such an infinity of 



30 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

division, that no other sensation of number that the earth or 
heaven can give is so impressive. 

Fourthly, Purity of Color: They are com- 
posed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of 
earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and most ethereal 
state in which it can be, to be visible. Farther, they receive 
the light of the sun in a state of far greater intensity than 
lower objects, the beams being transmitted to them through 
atmospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by mist, 
smoke, or any other impurity. Hence their colors are more 
pure and vivid, and their white less sullied than those of any 
other clouds. 

Lastly. Variety. Variety is never so conspicuous, as when 
it is united with symmetry. . . . Nature never lets oue 
of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud 
be like another ; but though each is adapted for the same 
function, and in its great features resembles all the others, 
not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, 
is without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have 
had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct 
forces in its production ; and in addition to this perpetual in- 
vention, visible in each member of each system, we find sys- 
tems of separate cloud intersecting one another, the sweeping 
lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid bars, these in 
their turn melting into banks of sand-like ripple and flakes 
of drifted and irregular foam ; under all, perhaps the massy 
outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motion- 



TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 3 1 

less buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their 
elevation and repose. 

Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region. 
. . . . the upper clouds, which, owing to their quietness 
and multitude, we may perhaps conveniently think of as the 
"cloud-flocks." 

If you watch for the next sunset, when there are a consid- 
erable number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially 
at the zenith, that the sky does not remain of the same color 
for two inches together : one cloud has a dark side of cold 
blue, and a fringe of milky white ; another, above it, has a 
dark side of purple and an edge of red ; another, nearer the 
sun, has an under-side of orange and an edge of gold; these 
you will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of the 
sky, which in places you will not be able to distinguish from 
the cool gray of the darker clouds, and which will be itself 
full of gradation, now pure and deep, now faint and feeble ; 
and all this is clone, not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, 
but over and over again in every square 3 r ard, so that there is 
no single part nor portion of the whole sky which has not in 
itself variety of color enough for a separate picture, and yet 
no single part which is like another, or which has not some 
peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of 
color of its own. 

The originality and vigor of separate conception, in cloud 
forms, gives to the scenery of the sky a force and a variety 



32 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain out- 
line in a hill district of great elevation ; and there is added to 
this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of 
passion and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate 
form that the earth can show. 

# * 

You may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, 
and you will find it put together as if there had been a year's 
thought over the plan of it, arranged with the most studied 
inequality — with the most delicate sjmimetry — with the most 
elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. You may try any other 
piece of cloud in the heaven, and you will find them every one 
as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another. 

# # 

We are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountain- 
ous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapor which 
compose it, are huger and higher than any mountain range 
of the earth ; and the distances between mass and mass are 
not yards of air traversed in an instant by the flying form, 
but valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the 
slow motion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely 
trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapor rushing into the 
heaven a thousand feet in a minute ; and that the toppling 
angle whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitu- 
dinous forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, 

three thousand feet from base to summit 

Every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 33 

enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, 

six or seven miles over an illuminated surface, furrowed by a 

thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks 

and promontories, and changing its features with the majestic 

velocity of the volcano. 

# 

Not in her most ponderous and lightless masses will nature 
ever leave us without some evidence of transmitted sunshine ; 
and she perpetually gives us passages in which the vapor be- 
comes visible only by the sunshine which it arrests and holds 
within itself, not caught on its surface, but entangled in its 
mass — floating fleeces, precious with the gold of Heaven; 
and this translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides 
even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent and 
delicate hues of partial illumination far more dependent upon 
the beams which pass through them than on those which are 
reflected upon them. 

Where Poussin or Claude have three similar masses, Nat- 
ure has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of minor 
thoughts — fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels 
to the Shechinah of the blue — fifty hollow ways among be- 
wildered hills — each with their own nodding rocks, and 
cloven precipices, and radiant summits, and robing vapors, 
but all unlike each other, except in beauty, all bearing wit- 
ness to the unwearied, exhaustless operation of the Infinite 
Mind. 



34 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

To the region of the rain-cloud belong all those phenomena 
of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or 
evening; in valleys, or over water, mirage, white steaming 
vapor rising in evaporation from moist and open surfaces, 
and everything which visibly affects the condition of the at- 
mosphere without actually assuming the form of a cloud. 
These phenomena are as perpetual in all countries as they are 
beautiful . . . through the rain-cloud, and its accessory 
phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and 
all that is hurtful concealed, . . . and accordingly, Nat- 
ure herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of 
most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but 
everywhere — everywhere at least, where there is anything 
worth calling landscape. I cannot answer for the desert of 
Sahara, but I know fehat there can be no greater mistake than 
supposing that delicate and variable effect of mists and rain- 
cloud are peculiar to northern climates. I have never seen 
in any place or country effects of mist more perfect than in 
the Campagna of Rome, and among the hills of Sorrento. 

# # 
We must understand another effect peculiar to the rain- 
cloud, that its openings exhibit the purest blue which the 
sky ever shows ; for as aqueous vapor always turns the sky 
more or less gray, it follows that we never can see the azure 
so intense as when the greater part of this vapor has just 
fallen in rain. Then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 35 

visible in the first openings, distinguished especially by the 
manner in which the clouds melt into it ; their edges passing 
off in faint white threads and fringes, through which the blue 
shines more and more intensely, till the last trace of vapor is 
lost in its perfect color. It is only the upper white clouds, 
however, which do this, or the last fragments of rain-clouds, 
becoming white as they disappear, so that the blue is never 
corrupted by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure 
white, the purest white which the sky ever shows. Thus 
we have a melting and palpitating color, never the same for 
two inches together, deepening, and broadening here aud 
there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and dying 
away through every tone of pure blue sky, into the snow 
white of the filmy cloud. Over this roll the determined edges 
of the rain-clouds, throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, 
into the upper sky. 

# 

Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at day- 
break, when the night mists first rise from off the plains, 
and watch their white and lake-like fields as they float in 
level bays and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of 
the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and 
more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; 
watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, 
how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes 
away; and down under their depths, the glittering city and 
green pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of 



36 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

winding rivers ; the flakes of light falling every moment faster 
and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges 
break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and 
ridges of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the 
plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered 
mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up toward you, 
along the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, 
iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of 
the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt 
back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade 
away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene 
heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless 
and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsub- 
stantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet 
a little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves 
into white towers, and stand like fortresses along the prom- 
ontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every instant 
higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows 
athwart the rocks ; and out of the pale blue of the horizon 
you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, 
pointed vapors, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with 
their gray network, and take the light off the landscape with 
an eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds and the 
motion of the leaves together; and then you will see the hori- 
zontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and lurid 
wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the 
shoulders of the hills ; you never see them form, but when 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 37 

you look back to a place which was clear an instant ago, 
there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk 
pauses over his prey. And then you will hear the sudden 
rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watch- 
towers of vapor swept away from their foundations, and wav- 
ing curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swing- 
ing from the burdened clouds in black, bending fringes, or 
pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its sur- 
face with foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you 
shall see the storm drift for an insant from off the hills, leav- 
ing their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow- 
white torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapor, now gone, 
now gathered again ; while the smouldering sun, seeming not 
far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as 
if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and 
rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no 
more, dyeing all the air about it with blood. And then you 
shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, 
and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the 
eastern hills, brighter — brighter yet, till the large white circle 
of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step 
by step, line by line ; star after star she quenches with her 
kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale pene- 
trable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the 
earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by com- 
pany, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion, 
that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth 



38 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

to reel under them. And then, wait yet for one hour, until 
the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, 
rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are 
drowned one by one in the glory of its burning ; watch the 
white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mount- 
ains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; watch the col- 
umnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downward, chasm 
by chasm, each in itself a new morning ; their long avalanches 
cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending 
each his tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the 
heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that 
heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light 
through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory 
on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven — 
one scarlet canopy — is interwoven with a roof of waving 
flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted 
wings of many companies of angels ; and then, when you can 
look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down 
with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me 
who has best delivered this His message unto men ! 

Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of 
their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnifi- 
cent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away ; they 
are shaped for their place, high above your head ; approach 
them and they form into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce 
fragments of thunderous vapor. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 39 

Without troubling ourselves at all about laws, or causes of 
color, the visible consequences of their operation are notably 
these — that when near us, clouds present only subdued and 
uncertain colors ; but when far from us, and struck by the 
sun on their under surface — so that the greater part of the 
light they receive is reflected — they become golden, purple, 
scarlet, and intense fiery white, mingled in all kinds of gra- 
dations. The finest scarlets are constantly seen in broken 
flakes on a deep purple ground of heavier cloud beyond, and 
some of the loveliest rose-colors on clouds in the east, opposite 

the sunset, or in the west in the morning A 

thunder-cloud, deep enough to conceal everything behind it, is 
often dark lead color, or sulphurous blue ; but the thin va- 
pors crossing it, milky-white. 

Though Nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit 
her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would 
satiate us and pall upon the senses. It is necessary to their 
appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest 
touches are things which must be watched for ; her most per- 
fect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. She is con- 
stantly doing something beautiful for us, but it is something 
which she has not done before and will not do again : — some 
exhibition of her general powers in particular circumstances, 
which if we do not catch at the instant it is passing, will not 
be repeated for us. 



40 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

# 

The great Angel of the Sea — rain; — the Angel, observe, 
the messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. 
Not the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but 
the going and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns 
upon that intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock ; — 
cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside well — perennial, patient, 
silent, clear ; stealing through its square font of rough-hewn 
stone ; ever thus deep — no more — which the winter wreck 
sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of stain 
as of decline — where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the 
insect darts undefiling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, 
lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping stones, — but 
through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp- 
strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the 
pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river gods have 
all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, 
white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly 
and bare ; but here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop 
still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the 
hills ; strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, 
born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trick- 
ling tinsel, answering to them as they wave. Nor are those 
wings colorless. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only 
as dark and gray ; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the 
fairest, though not the most dazzling of the hues of heaven. 
Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 41 

form soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue ; 
or when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing 
the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed 
throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and 
purple, and amber, and blue ; not shining, but misty-soft ; the 
barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or 
tresses of cloud, like floss silk ; looking as if each knot were 
a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain. No clouds form such 
skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable. For these are 
the robes of love of the Angel of the Sea. To these that 
name is chiefly given, the " spreadings of the clouds," from 
their extent, their gentleness, their fulness of rain. Note 
how they are spoken of in Job — "By them judgeth He the 
people. He giveth meat in abundance. With clouds He 
covereth the light. He hath hidden the light in His hands, 
and commanded that it should return. He speaks of it to His 
friend; that it is His possession, and that He may ascend 
thereto." 

That, then, is the Sea Angel's message to God's friends; 
that the meaning of those strange golden lights and purple 
flushes before the morning rain. The rain is sent to judge, 
and feed us, but the light is the possession of the friends of 
God, and they may ascend thereto, — when the tabernacle veil 
will cross and part its rays no more. But the Angel of the 
Sea has also another message, — in the "great rain of his 
strength," rain of trial, sweeping away ill-set foundations. 
Then his robe is not spread softly over the whole heaven, as 



42 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

a veil, but sweeps back from His shoulders, ponderous, 
oblique, terrible — leaving his sword-arm free. 

The approach of trial- storm, hurricane-storm, is indeed in its 
vastness as the clouds of the softer rain. But it is not slow 
nor horizontal, but swift and steep; swift with passion of 
ravenous winds; steep as slope of some dark, hollowed hill. 
The fronting clouds come leaning forward, one thrusting the 
other aside, or on; impatient, ponderous, impendent like 
globes of rock tossed by Titans — Ossa on Olympus — but 
hurled forward all, in one wave of cloud-lava — cloud whose 
throat is as a sepulchre. Fierce behind them rages the 
oblique wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as showers 
of driven steel ; the pillars of it full of ghastly life ; Rain- 
Furies, shrieking as they fly; — scourging, as with whips of 
scorpions; — the earth ringing and trembling under them, 
heaven wailing wildly, the trees stooped blindly clown, cover- 
ing their faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, ruin of 
their branches flying by them like black stubble. 

We may find, I think, sufficient cause for putting honor 
upon the rain-cloud. Few of us, perhaps, have thought in 
watching its career across our own mossy hills, or listening 
to the murmur of the springs amidst the mountain quietness, 
that the chief masters of the human imagination owed, and 
confessed that they owed, the force of their noblest thoughts, 
not to the flowers of the valley, nor the majesty of the hill, 
but to the flying cloud. . . . The opening songs of the rain- 






THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 43 

clouds in Aristophanes is entirely beautiful: "0 eternal 
Clouds ! let us raise into open sight our dewy existence, from 
the deep sounding Sea, our Father, up to the crests of the 
wooded hills, whence we look down over the sacred land, 
nourishing its fruits, and over the rippling of the divine 
rivers, aud over the low murmuring bays of the deep." 

Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nat- 
ure, and without assistance or combination, water is the most 
wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the change- 
fulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as 
the instrument by which the earth was modelled into sym- 
metry, and its crags chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form 
of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that tran- 
scendent light which we could not have conceived if we had 
not seen : then as it exists in the form of the torrent — in the 
iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, 
in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, 
in the broad lake and glancing river ; finally, in that which 
is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, uncon- 
querable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity 
of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this uni- 
versal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we 
follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying 

to paint a soul. 

# 

To paint the actual play of light on the reflective surface, 
or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to 



44 TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

show itself — to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of 
a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea waves, 
so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient — so 
mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its motion — 
with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and 
wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself 
alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed 
with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below ; 
to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of man; to do it 
even partially has been granted to but one or two. 

There is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as 
much landscape in it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy 
dull thing we suppose it to be ; it has a heart like ourselves, 
and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall 
trees, and the blades of the shaking grass, and all manner of 
hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly 
gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the 
foul city, is not altogether base ; down in that, if you will 
look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off 
sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will 
that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the 
street, or the image of the sky — so it is with almost all other 
things that we unkindly despise. 

Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaff hausen, on 
the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 45 

vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished veloc- 
ity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, cov- 
ering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick — so 
swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe 
from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the 
trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant 
that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that 
foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chryso- 
prase ; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white 
flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, 
bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air 
with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the 
restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled 
by the foam in its body, showers purer than the sky through 
white rain-clouds ; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremu- 
lous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through 
the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at 
last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in 
sympathy with the wild water ; their dripping masses lifted 
at intervals like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger 
gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy 
rocks as its roar dies away; the clew gushing from their 
thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, 
and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the 
shore, feeding the lichens which chase and checker them 
with purple and silver. 



46 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the 
sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for 
three or four days and nights, and to those who have not, I 
believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or 
size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit 
between sea and air. The water from its prolonged agitation 
is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of 
accumulated yeast, which hangs in ropes and wreaths from 
Wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, forms a 
festoon like a drapery, from its edge ; these are taken up by 
the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, 
hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick 
as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each ; 
the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, 
underneath, making them white all through, as the water is 
under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half 
water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever 
they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes 
and strangles like actual water. Add to this, that when the 
air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray 
of the sea is caught by it and covers its surface not merely 
with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist ; 
imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very 
level of the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and fly- 
ing in rags and fragments from wave to wave ; and finally, 
conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 47 

velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in preci- 
pices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through 
all this chaos ; and you will understand that there is indeed 
no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, 
nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position 
is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, 
and that you can see no farther in any direction than you 
could see through a cataract. . . . Few people have 
had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and 
when they have they cannot face it. To hold by a mast or 
a rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning 
which few people have courage to go through. To those who 
have, it is one of the noblest lessons of Nature. 

Seen from the land, the curl of the breakers is somewhat 
uniform and monotonous ; the size of the waves out at sea 
is uncomprehended, and those nearer the eye seem to succeed 
and resemble each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to 
break in the same lines and forms. 

Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a 
totally different impression. Every wave around us appears 
vast — every one different from the rest — and the breakers 
present, now that we see them with their backs toward us, 
the grand extended, and mixed lines of long curvation, which 
are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. Reck- 
lessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual, 
changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it 



48 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

appears from the shore, but of the very same water rising and 
falling. Of waves that successively approach and break, each 
appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part being 
performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another; and 
there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of restless- 
ness, any more than in any successive and continuous func- 
tions of life and death. But it is when we perceive that it is 
no succession of wave, but the same water constantly rising 
and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms 
and with fresh fury, that we perceive the perturbed spirit, 
and feel the intensity of its unwearied rage. The sensation 
of power is also trebled ; for not only is the vastness of ap- 
parent size much increased, but the whole action is different ; 
it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it 
tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping 
exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not 
now appear to fall, but to burst upon the shore ; which never 
perishes, but recoils and recovers. 

Every fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that 
crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy 
and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in 
Amazon or Ganges, owe their play and purity and power to 
the ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, ex- 
tended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's sur- 
face is of course necessary before any wave can so much as 
overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage ; and how seldom do we 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 49 

enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our pleas- 
ant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of 
which every blade of grass that waves in their clear waters is 
a perpetual sign ; that the dew and the rain fallen on the face 
of the earth shall find no resting-place ; shall find, on the con- 
trary, fixed channels traced for them, from the ravines of the 
central crests down which they roar in sudden ranks of foam, 
to the dark hollows beneath the banks of lowland pasture, 
round which they must circle slowly among the stems and 
beneath the leaves of the lilies ; paths prepared for them, by 
which at some appointed rate of journey, they must evermore 
descend, sometimes slow and sometimes swift, but never 
pausing ; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over 
marked for them at each successive sunrise, the place which 
has known them knowing them no more, and the gateways of 
guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none 
letting them in their pilgrimage ; and, from far off, the great 
heart of the sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth unto 
deep : I know not which of the two is most wonderful — that 
calm, gradated invisible slope of the champaign land, which 
gives motion to the stream; or that passage cloven for it 
through the ranks of hills, which, necessary for the health of 
the land immediately around them, would yet, unless so supcr- 
naturally divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the 
waters from far-off countries. When did the great spirit of 
the river first knock at those adamantine gates? When did 
the porter open to it, and cast his keys away for ever, 



50 THO TIGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

lapped in whirling sand? I am not satisfied — no one should 
be satisfied — with that vague answer — the river cut its way. 
Not so. The river found its way. 

That turbid foaming of the angry waters, — that tearing 
down of bank and rock along the flanks of its fury, — are no 
disturbances of the kind course of nature ; they are beneficent 
operations of laws necessary to the existence of man and to 
the beauty of the earth. The process is continued more 
gently, but not less effectively, over all the surface of the 
lower undulating country ; and each filtering thread of sum- 
mer rain which trickles through the short turf of the uplands 
is bearing its own appointed burden of earth to be thrown 

down on some new natural garden in the dingles below. 

# 

All rivers small or large, agree in one character ; they like 
to lean a little on one side ; they cannot bear to have their 
channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, 
have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get 
cool under ; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be 
shallow, and foolish, and childlike ; and another steep shore 
under which they can pause and purify themselves, and get 
the strength of their waves fully together for due occasions. 
Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side 
of their life for play, and another for work ; and can be bril- 
liant, and chattering, and transparent when they are at ease, 
and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 5i 

themselves to the main purpose. And rivers are just in this 
divided, also, like wicked and good men ; the good rivers have 
serviceable deep places all along their banks that ships can 
sail in, but the wicked rivers go scoopingly, irre'gularty, under 
their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no 
boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks, 
and pools like wells which no one can get out of but the 
water-kelpie that lives at the bottom ; but wicked or good, 
the rivers all agree in having two sides. 

The river cuts its way in a ravine some five or six hundred 
feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the gentle 
hills, unthought of, until its edge is approached; and then 
suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, 
beneath, the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls 
of sandstone cliff that form its banks ; hollowed out where 
the river leans against them, as it turns, into perilous over- 
hanging, and on the other shore, at the same spots, having 
little breadths of meadow between them and the water, half- 
grown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness, inaccessible 
from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers along 
the hardly traceable foot-path which struggles for existence 
beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples, and eddies, 
and murmurs in an utter solitude. It is passing through the 
midst of a thickly peopled country ; but never was stream so 
lonely. The feeblest and most far-away torrent among the 
high hills has its companions; the goats browse beside it; 



52 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with his 
staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to 
his mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions ; it flows 
on in an infinite seclusion, not secret nor threatening, but a 
quietness of sweet daylight and open air — a broad space of 
tender and deep desolateness, dropped into repose out of the 
midst of human labor and life ; the waves plashing lowly, 
with none to hear them ; and the wild birds building in the 
boughs, with none to fray them away ; and the soft, fragrant 
herbs rising, and breathing, and fading, with no hand to 
gather them ; — and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, 
and to the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. 

It was a maxim of Raffaelle's that the artist's object was to 
make things not as Nature makes them, but as she would 
make them ; as she ever tries to make them, but never suc- 
ceeds, though her aim may be deduced from a comparison of 
her effects ; just as if a number of archers had aimed unsuc- 
cessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then re- 
moved, we could by the examination of their arrow-marks 
point out the probable position of the spot aimed at, with a 
certainty of being nearer to it than any of their shots. We 
have most of us heard of original sin, and may, perhaps, in 
our modest moments, conjecture that we are not quite what 
God or Nature would have us to be. Raffaelle had something 
to mend in humanity ; I should like to have seen him mend- 
ing a daisy, or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard-seed, 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 53 

or any other of God's slightest works! If he had accom- 
plished that, one might have found for him more respectable 
employment, to set the stars in better order, perhaps, (they 
seem grievously scattered as they are, and to be of all man- 
ner of shapes and sizes, except the ideal shape, and the 
proper size ;) or to give us a correct view of the ocean, that at 
least seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the 
very fishermen do not know this day how far it will reach, 
driven up before the west wind. Perhaps some one else 
does, but that is not our business. Let us go clown and stand 
on the beach by the sea — the great irregular sea, and count 
whether the thunder of it is not out of time — one — two ; 
here comes a well formed wave at last, trembling a little at 
the top, but on the whole, orderly. So ! Crash among the 
shingle, and up as far as this gray pebble ! Now, stand by 
and watch. Another : Ah, careless wave ! why couldn't you 
have kept your crest on? It is all gone away into spray, 
striking up against the cliffs there — I thought as much — 
missed the mark by a couple of feet ! Another : How now, 
impatient one ! couldn't you have waited till your friend's re- 
flux was clone with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in 
that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and 
a goodly one at last ! "What think we of yonder slow rise, 
and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave ! 
not so fast! not so fast! Where are you coming to? This is 
too bad ; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you 
in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope 



54 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying 
a great white tablecloth of foam all the way to the shore, 
as if the marine gods were to dine off it ! Alas, for these 
unhappy "arrow shots" of Nature! She will never hit her 
mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them 
into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. 

" To dress and to keep it." 
That, then, was to be our work. Alas ! what work have 
we set ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged the 
garden instead of kept it — feeding our war-horses with its 
flowers, and splintering its trees into spear-shafts ! 

"What infinite wonderfulness there is in vegetation, con- 
sidered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth be- 
comes the companion of man — his friend and his teacher! 
. . . vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet 
the soul of man. The earth in its depths must remain dead 
and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change ; but at 
its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it 
ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate 
being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot 
leave its appointed place ; passes through life without con- 
sciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty 
of youth, without its passion ; and declines to the weakness 
of age, without its regret. And in this mystery of intermedi- 
ate being . . . most of the lessons we need are written, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 55 

all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this 
link between the Earth and Man; wonderful in universal 
adaptation to his need, desire and discipline; God's daily 
preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of 
life. First a carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored 
fantasy of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foli- 
age to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen 
rain, that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but 
stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to 
bear this leafage ; easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to 
make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough- 
handle, according to his temper) useless it had been, if harder ; 
useless, if less fibrous ; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, 
and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the 
earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of 
winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, in- 
numerable according to the need, are made beautiful and 
palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, 
or provision for his service ; cold juice, or glowing spice, or 
balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of 
styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm; and all these presented 
in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and 
strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, 
as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble ten- 
drils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and 
limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with 
faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the 



56 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

strength of rock, or binding the transiency of the sand ; crests 
basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping 
spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled 
fields beneath every wave of ocean — clothing with variegated, 
everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or 
ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and 
simplest joy of humanity. 

The laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and 
fixed as those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but 
equally authoritative and inviolable. . . . Few ever think 
of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything posses- 
sing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. 

The earth, as a tormented and trembling ball, may have 
rolled in space for myriads of ages before humanity was 
formed from its dust; and as a devastated ruin it may con- 
tinue to roll, when all that dust shall again have been min- 
gled with ashes that never were warmed by life, or polluted 
by sin. But for us the intelligible and substantial fact is that 
the earth has been brought, by forces we know not of, into a 
form fitted for our habitation. 

Despise the earth, or slander it ; fix your eyes on its gloom, 
and forget its loveliness ; and we do not thank you for your 
languid or despairing perception of brightness in heaven. 
But rise up actively on the earth, — learn what there is in it, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 57 

know its color and form, and the full measure and make of it, 
and if after that you can say, ' ' heaven is bright " it will be a 
precious truth, but not till then. 

* # 
" And God said, Let the waters which are under the heaven 
be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land ap- 
pear." We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep 
significance of this sentence. . . . Up to that moment 
the earth has been void, for it had been without form. The 
command that the waters should be gathered was the com- 
mand that the earth should be sculptured. . . . The 
dry land appeared, not in level sands, forsaken by the surges, 
but in range beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, for 
ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be companioned 
by the clouds of heaven. 

As we read the mighty sentence — "Let the dry land ap- 
pear," we should try to follow the finger of God, as it en- 
graved upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the 
law of its everlasting form; as, gulf by gulf, the channels of 
the deep were ploughed; and cape by cape, the lines were 
traced with Divine foreknowledge, of the shores that were 
to limit the nations ; and chain by chain the mountain-walls 
were lengthened forth, and their foundations fastened for 
ever ; and the compass was set upon the face of the depth, and 
the fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world were 
made ; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow on 
Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary. 



58 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what 
violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles 
and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountains, brought 
out with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expression, 
passion, and strength; the plains and the lower hills are the 
repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when its mus- 
cles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty, 
yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. . . . The 
spirit of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, repose; 
and between these there is to be found every variety of motion 
and of rest ; from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firma- 
ment, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with 
heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting 
like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan hands 
to Heaven, saying, " I live forever ! " 

There is an expression and a feeling about all the hill lines 
of nature not to be reduced to line and rule — not to be meas- 
ured by angles or described by compasses — not to be chipped 
out by the geologist, or equated by the mathematician. It is 
intangible, incalculable — a thing to be felt, not understood — 
to be loved, not comprehended — a music of the eyes, a mel- 
ody of the heart, whose truth is known only by its sweetness. 

It is deeply necessary for all men to consider the magnifi- 
cence of the accomplished purpose, and the depth of the wis- 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 59 

dom and love which are manifested in the ordinances of the 
hills. For observe, in order to bring the world into the form 
which it now bears, it was not mere sculpture that was needed ; 
the mountains could not stand for a day unless they were 
formed of materials altogether different from those which 
constitute the lower hills, and the surfaces of the valleys. A 
harder substance had to be prepared for every mountain chain ; 
yet not so hard but that it might be capable of crumbling down 
into earth fit to nourish the Alpine forest and the Alpine 
flower: not so hard but that, in the midst of the utmost 
majesty of its enthroned strength, there should be seen on it 
the seal of death, and the writing of the same sentence that 
had gone forth against the human frame, " Dust thou art, and 
unto dust thou shaft return." And with this perishable sub- 
stance the most majestic forms were to be framed that were 
consistent with the safety of man ; and the peak was to be 
lifted, and the cliff rent, as high and as steeply as was possible, 
in order yet to permit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon 
the slope, and the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. 

And observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished in 
the doing this. It was indeed, absolutely necessary that such 
eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in any 
wise for human habitation ; for without mountains the air 
could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, 
and the earth must have become for the most part desert 
plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and 
the purifying of the winds are the least of the services ap- 



60 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

pointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for 
the beauty of God's working, — to startle its lethargy with the 
deep and pure agitation of astonishment, — are their higher 
missions. They are as a great and noble architecture ; first 
giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with 
mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to ex- 
amine in their connected system the features of even the most 
ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has 
been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the 
closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying 
the heart of man. 

" As far as possible : " that is, as far as is consistent with 
the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole 
earth. Death must be upon the hills ; and the cruelty of the 
tempest smite them, and the brier and thorn spring up upon 
them ; but they so smite as to bring their rooks into the fair- 
est forms ; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom 
like the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and 
Cumberland, though often too barren to be perfectly beauti- 
ful, and always too low to be perfectly sublime, it is strange 
how many deep sources of delight are^gathered into the com- 
pass of their glens and vales ; and how, down to the most 
secret cluster of their far-away flowers, and the idlest leap of 
their straying streamlets, the whole heart of Nature seems 
thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding forth her ever- 
lasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so passionate, 
that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at last, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 61 

neglect of her nobleness, and apathy to her love. But among 
the true mountains of the greater orders, the Divine purpose 
of appeal at once to all the faculties of the human spirit be- 
comes still more manifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, 
in some degree, the richness of the valleys at their feet. . . 
. . But the great mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. 
Let the reader imagine, first, the appearance of the most varied 
plain of some richly cultivated country ; let him imagine it 
dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures ; let 
him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumer- 
able and changeful incidents of scenery and life, leading pleas- 
ant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of 
cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet foot-paths through 
its avenues, and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow 
wandering spots of cattle ; and when he has wearied himself 
with endless imagining, and left no space without some love- 
liness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its 
infinite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, 
gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the 
other like a woven garment ; and shaken into deep falling folds, 
as the robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright 
rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and 
all its forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as 
a rider rears himself back when his horse plunges ; and all 
its villages nestling themselves into the new windings of its 
glens ; and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of green 
sward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and 



62 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

sweeping clown into endless slopes, with a cloud here and 
there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he 
will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation • 
of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the low- 
land scenery becomes lovelier in this change ; the trees which 
grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume 
strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves 
against the mountain side ; they breathe more freely, and toss 
their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking 
to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree ; 
the flowers which on the arable plain fell before the plough, 
now find out for themselves unapproachable places, where year 
by year they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil ; 
and the streams which in the level land crept in dark eddies by 
unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are 
clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the 
glance of their waves can reach. 

It may not be profitless to review the three great offices 
which mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to 
preserve the health and increase the happiness of mankind. 
Their first use is of course to give motion to water. And the 
incalculable blessing of the power given to us in most valleys, 
of reaching by excavation some point whence the water will 
rise to the surface of the ground in perennial flow, is entirely 
owing to the concave disposition of the beds of clay or rock, 
raised from beneath the bosom of the valley into ranks of 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 03 

enclosing hills. The second great use of mountains is to 
maintain a constant change in the currents and nature of the 
air. . . . Mountains divide the earth not only into dis- 
tricts, but into climates, and cause perpetual currents of air 
to traverse their passes, and ascend or descend their ravines, 
altering both the temperature and nature of the air as it 
passes, in a thousand different ways ; moistening it with the 
spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it hither 
and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it within 
clefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till it is as 
cold as November mists, then sending it forth again to breathe 
softly across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be scorched 
among sunburnt shales, and grassless crags; then drawing 
it back in moaning swirls through clefts of ice, and up into 
dewy wreaths above the snow-fields; then piercing it with 
strange electric darts and flashes of mountain fire, and toss- 
ing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass is 
tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when 
chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off 
plains. 

The third great use of mountains is to cause perpetual 
change in the soils of the earth. Without such provision 
the ground under cultivation would in a series of years be- 
come exhausted and require to be upturned laboriously by 
the hand of man. " But the elevations of the earth's surface 
provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher mountains 
suffer their summits to be broken into fragments and to be 



64 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

cast clown into sheets of massy rock, full of every substance 
necessary for the nourishment of plants ; these fallen frag- 
ments are again broken by frost and ground by torrents, into 
various conditions of sand and clay — materials which are 
distributed perpetually by the streams farther and farther from 
the mountain's base. Every shower which swells the rivulets 
enables their waters to carry certain portions of earth into 
new positions, and exposes new banks of ground to be mined 

in their turn. 

* 

It is not, in reality, a degrading, but a true, large, and en- 
nobling view of the mountain ranges of the world, if we com- 
pare them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by a 
prudent gardener beside his garden beds, whence, at inter- 
vals, he casts on them some scattering of new and virgin 
ground. That which we so often lament as convulsion or 
destruction is nothing else than the momentary shaking off 
the dust from the spade. The winter floods, which inflict a 
temporary devastation, bear with them the elements of suc- 
ceeding fertility ; the fruitful field is covered with sand and 
shingle in momentary judgment, but in enduring mercy; and 
the great river, which chokes its mouth with marsh, and tosses 
terror along its shore, is but scattering the seeds of the har- 
vest of futurity, and preparing the seats of unborn genera- 
tions. 

I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of mount- 
ains ; I do not count the benefit of the supply of summer streams 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 65 

from the moors of the higher ranges, — of the various me- 
dicinal plants which are nested among their rocks; — of the 
delicate pasturage which they furnish for cattle, — of the for- 
ests in which they bear timber for shipping, — the stones they 
supply for building, or the ores of metal which they collect 
into spots open to discovery, and easy for working. All 
these benefits are of a secondary or a limited nature. But 
the three great functions which I have just described — those 
of giving motion and change to water, air, and earth — are 
indispensable to human existence ; they are operations to be 
regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as the laws which 
bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply itself in the earth. 
And thus those desolate and threatening ranges of dark 
mountain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have 
looked upon with aversion or with terror, and shrunk back 
from as if they were haunted by perpetual images of death, 
are, in reality, sources of life and happiness far fuller and 
more beneficent than all the bright fruitfulness of the plain. 
The valleys only feed; the mountains feed, and guard, and 
strengthen us. We take our idea of f earf ulness and sublimity 
alternately from the mountains and the sea ; but we associate 
them unjustly. The sea wave, with all its beneficence, is yet 
devouring and terrible ; but the silent wave of the blue mount- 
ain is lifted towards heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy ; 
and the one surge, unfathomable in its darkness, the other, 
unshaken in its faithfulness, forever bear the seal of their 
appointed symbol, " Thy righteousness is like the great mount- 
ains ; Thy judgments are a great deep." 



C>6 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Look at the crest of the Alps, from the far-away plains over 
which its light is cast when human souls hold communion 
with it by the myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, 
and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and 
the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them 
all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the 
depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. Thus 
was it set for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the 
sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. 
It was built for its place in the far-off sky ; approach it, and 
as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its founda- 
tion, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast 
aeriel shore, is at last met by the Eternal, "Here shall thy 
waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched 
fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its 
silver fret- work saddened into wasting snow, the storm brands 
of ages are on its heart, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly 
on its white raiment. 

It has always appeared to me that there was, even in 
healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable mel- 
ancholy, nor could I ever escape from the feeling that here, 
where chiefly the beauty of God's working was manifested to 
men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the en- 
during of His indignation against sin. . . . And in this 
mountain gloom, which weighs so strongly upon the human 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 67 

heart that in all times hitherto, the hill defiles have been 
either avoided in terror or inhabited in penance, there is but 
the fulfilment of the universal law, that where the beauty and 
wisdom of the Divine working are most manifested, there 
also are manifested most clearly the terror of God's wrath, 
and inevitableness of His power. . . . The hills were or- 
dained for the help of man ; but, instead of raising his eyes to 
the hills, from whence comethhis help, he does his idol sacri- 
fice " upon every high hill and under every green tree." The 
mountain of the Lord's house is established above the hills; 
but Nadab and Abihu shall see under His feet the body of 
heaven in his clearness, yet go down to kindle the censer 
against their own souls. And so to the end of time it will be ; 
to the end, that cry will still be heard along the Alpine winds, 
"Hear, oh ye mountains, the Lord's controversy ! " Still their 
gulfs of thawless ice, and unretarded roar of tormented 
waves, and deathful falls of fruitless waste, and unredeemed 
decay, must be the image of the souls of those who have 
chosen the darkness, and whose cry shall be to the mountains 
to fall on them, and to the hills to cover them ; and still, to 
the end of time, the clear waters of the unfailing springs, and 
the white pasture-lilies in their clothed multitude, and the 
abiding of the burning peaks in their nearness to the opened 
heaven, shall be the types, and the blessings, of those who 
have chosen light, and of whom it is written, "The moun- 
tains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills right- 
eousness." 



68 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

As we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by- 
earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of 
perfect repose succeeded those of destruction. The pools of 
calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies 
gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows ; the vil- 
lage rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church- 
tower, white through the storm- twilight, proclaims a renewed 
appeal to His protection in whose hand " are all the corners 
of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There 
is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same 
lesson. It is just where "the mountain falling cometh to 
naught, and the rock is removed out of his place," that, in 
process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the frag- 
ments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among 
the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered be- 
neath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no 
more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from 
the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their 
fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient 
promise — 

" Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it com- 
eth ; " — "For thou shalt be in league with the Stones of the 
Field; and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." 

" How were these mountain volumes raised and how are they 
supported? " The only answer is : " Behold the cloud." No 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. G9 

eye has ever seen one of them raised on a large scale ; no in- 
vestigation has brought completely to light the conditions 
under which the materials which support them were prepared. 
This only is the simple fact, that they are raised into such 
sloping positions ; generally resting one upon another, like a 
row of books fallen down, the last book being usually propped 
by a piece of formless crystalline rock. . . . And yet no 
trace of the means by which all this was effected is left. The 
rock stands forth in its white and rugged mystery, as if 
its peak had been born out of the blue sky. The strength 
that raised it, and the sea that wrought upon it, have passed 
away, and left no sign ; and we have no words wherein to de- 
scribe their departure, no thoughts to form about their action, 
than those of the perpetual and unsatisfied interrogation, — 
"What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fledclest? And ye 
mountains, that ye skipped like lambs? " 

To myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all 
natural scenery ; .... I can look with happy admiration 
at the lowland flowers and woods, and open skies, the hap- 
piness is tranquil and cold, like that of examining detached 
flowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book. . . 

. But the slightest rise and fall in the road — a mossy bank 
at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, over- 
hanging it, — a ripple over three or four stones in the stream 
by the bridge, — above all a wild bit of ferny ground under a 
fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one 



70 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

got to the other side of the trees, will instantly give me in- 
tense delight, because the shadow, or the hope of the hills is 
in them. 

The best image which the world can give of Paradise is in 
the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the 
sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal 
snows above ; this excellence not being in any wise a matter 
referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demon- 
strable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colors 
on the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity 
of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the 
eye at any given moment. 

* # 
Consider the difference produced in the whole tone of a 
landscape color by the introduction of purple, violet, and deep 
ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordi- 
nary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky, the green 
of grass — which I will suppose entirely fresh and bright; 
the green of trees ; and certain elements of purple, far more 
rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their 
bark and shadows as well as in ploughed fields, and dark 
ground in general. But among mountains, in addition to all 
this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are in- 
troduced in their distances ; and even near, by films of cloud 
passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are 
produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 71 

purples passing into rose-color of otherwise wholly unattain- 
able delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky 
being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. 
Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the rose- 
color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve 
or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what ten- 
derness in color means at all; bright tenderness he may, in- 
deed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness 
of the far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive. Together 
with this great source of preeminence in mass of color, we 
have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and 
enamel- work of the color- jew T elry on every stone ; and that 
of the continual variety in species of flower ; most of the 
mountain flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the 
lowland ones. The wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, 
the only supreme flowers that the lowlands can generally 
show ; and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more 
fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape hya- 
cinth, at its best cannot match even the dark bell-gentian, 
leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queenli- 
ness. And the Alpine rose and Highland heather are wholly 
without similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and 
wood anemone are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains 
as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and narcissus I 
have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis 
is preeminently a mountaineer ; the Savoyard's name for its 
flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very beautiful. To this su- 



72 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

premacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inesti- 
mable gain in the continual presence and power of water. 
Neither in its clearness, its color, its fantasy of motion, its 
calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can 
water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A 
sea wave is far grander than any torrent — but of the sea 
and its influences we are not now speaking ; and the sea it- 
self, though it can be clear, is never calm, among our shores, 
in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems 
only to pause ; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out 
of sight of the ocean, a lowlander cannot be considered ever to 
have seen water at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock 
shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through 
them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents 
among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, 
the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines 
of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills 
reversed in the blue of morning — all these things belong to 
those hills as their undivided inheritance. 

The mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly 
as complete as it is in water. . . . — the mere quantity 
of foliage visible in the folds and promontories of a single 
Alp being greater than that of an entire lowland landscape — 
and to this charm of redundance is added that of clear visi- 
bility — tree after tree being constantly shown in successive 
height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 73 

flanks of masses, as in the plains ; and the forms of multitudes 
of them continually defined against the clear sky, near and 
above, or against white clouds entangled among their branches, 
instead of being confused in dimness of distance. 

# 

* * 

There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which 
may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but 
there are effects by tens of thousands, forever invisible and 
inconceivable to the inhabitants of the plains, manifested 
among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power 
of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them, and 
above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception 
of the baseless architecture of the sky ; and for the beauty 
of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing 
its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points 
of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the 
arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And 
of the nobler cloud manifestations — the breaking of their 
troublous seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling 
with lightning; or the going forth of the morning along 
their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome 
and dome of snow; — of these things there can be as little 
imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains 
as of the scenery of another planet than his own. 

# * 

Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not 
spoken ; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do 



74 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength 
and terror are not to all minds subjects of desired contem- 
plation. . . . But loveliness of color, perfectness of 
form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, 
are precious to all undiseased human minds ; and the supe- 
riority of the mountains in all these things to the lowlands is, 
I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window 
matched with a white one, or the w T ealth of a museum com- 
pared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem 
to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools 
and cathedrals, full of treasures of illuminated manuscript 
for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the w r orker, 
quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for 
the worshipper. 

It will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in 
the hills the purposes of their Maker have indeed been ac- 
complished in such measure as, through the sin or folly of 
men, He ever permits them to be accomplished. It may not 
seem, from the general language held concerning them, or 
from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had 
serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, 
be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both 
constant and essential to the progress of the race. 

Consider, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to 
their mountain scenery some share in giving the Greeks and 
Italians their intellectual lead among the nations of Europe. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 75 

There is not a single spot of land in either of these coun- 
tries from which mountains are not discernible. The mount- 
ain outlines seen from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Flor- 
ence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever 
dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the 
Greeks for mountain rnggedness, their placing the shrine of 
Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Par- 
nassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they 
themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual in- 
spiration to the powers of the hills. Nor would it be diffi- 
cult to show that every great writer of either of these nations, 
however little definite regard he might manifest for the land- 
scape of his country, had been mentally formed and disci- 
plined by it, so that even such enjoyment as Homer's of the 
ploughed ground and poplar groves owes its intensity and 
delicacy to the excitement of the imagination produced, with- 
out his own consciousness, by other and grander features of 
the scenery to which he had been accustomed from a child ; 
and differs in every respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and 
prosaic affection with which the same ploughed land and 

poplars would be regarded by a native of the Netherlands. 

# 

# # 

Mountains have always possessed the power, first, of ex- 
citing religious enthusiasm ; secondly, of purifying religious 
faith. These two operations are partly contrary to one an- 
other ; for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to be impure, and 
the mountains, by exciting morbid conditions of the imagina- 



76 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

tion, have caused in great part the legendary and romantic 
forms of belief ; on the other hand, by fostering simplicity 
of life and dignity of morals, they have purified by action 
what they falsified by imagination. And, in fact, much of 
the apparently harmful influence of hills on the religion of 
the world is nothing else than their general gift of exciting 
the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly solemn 
tones of mind. . . . Strictly speaking, we ought to con- 
sider the superstitions of the hills, universally, as a form of 
poetry ; regretting only that men have not yet learned how to 
distinguish poetry from well-founded faith. And if we do 
this, and enable ourselves thus to review, without carping or 
sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination, which have arisen 
among the inhabitants of Europe, we shall find on the one 
hand, the mountains of Greece and Italy forming all the love- 
liest dreams, first of the Pagan, then of the Christian my- 
thology ; on the other, those of Scandinavia to be the first 
sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was 
brought by the Normans into Southern Europe. Normandy 
itself is to all intents and purposes a hill country ; composed, 
over large extents, of granite and basalt, often rugged and 
covered with heather on the summits, and traversed by beau- 
tiful and singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful 
and wild. We have thus one branch of the Northern religious 
imagination rising among the Scandinavian fiords, tempered 
in France by various encounters with elements of Arabian, 
Italian, Provencal, or other Southern poetry, and then react- 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 77 

ing upon Southern England ; while other forms of the same 
rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the 
mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with the 
Norman Christianity, retaining even to the latest times some 
dark color of superstition, but giving all its poetical and 
military pathos to Scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness 
and wildness of tone to the Reformed faith, in its manifes- 
tations among the Scottish hills. 

It is on less disputable ground that I may claim the reader's 
gratitude to the mountains, as having been the centres not 
only of imaginative energy, but of purity both in doctrine and 
practice. The enthusism of the persecuted Covenanter, and 
his variously modified claims to miraculous protection or 
prophetic inspiration, hold exactly the same relation to the 
smooth proprieties of Lowland Protestantism, that the demon- 
combats, fastings, visions, and miracles of the mountain 
monk or anchorite hold to the wealth and worldliness of the 
Vatican. It might indeed happen, whether at Canterbury, 
Rheims, or Rome, that a good bishop should occasionally 
grasp the crozier ; and a vast amount of prudent, educated, 
and admirable piety is to be found among the ranks of the 
lowland clergy. But still the large aspect of the matter is 
always among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, 
orthodoxy, caution and propriety, live by the slow stream 
that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral ; and that en- 
thusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, 
characterize the pastor dwelling by the torrent side. In like 



78 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

manner, taking the large aspects of Komanism, we see that 
its worst corruptions, its cunning, its worldliness, and its 
permission of crime, are traceable for the most part to low- 
land prelacy ; but its self-denials, its obediences, humilities, 
sincere claims to miraculous power, and faithful discharges 
of duty, are traceable chiefly to its anchorites and mountain 
clergy. 

# * 
Mark the significance of the earliest mention of mountains 
in the Mosaic books ; at least of those in which some Divine 
appointment or command is stated respecting them. They 
are first brought before us as refuges for God's people from 
the two judgments of water and fire. The ark rests upon 
the "mountains of Ararat; " and man, having passed through 
that great baptism unto death, kneels upon the earth first where 
it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain clouds 
the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again : from the 
midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of the De- 
ity to His servant is, "Escape to the mountain;" and the 
morbid fear of the hills, which fills any human mind, after long 
stay in places of luxury and sin, is strongly marked in Lot's 
complaining reply: "I cannot escape to the mountain, lest 
some evil take me." The third mention, in way of ordinance, 
is a far more solemn one; " Abraham lifted up his eyes, and 
saw the place afar off." "The Place," the Mountain of 
Myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of 
Abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise re- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 79 

garclecl in that vow: "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, 
from whence cometh mine help." And the fourth is the 
delivery of the law on Sinai. 

It seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were ap- 
pointed by their Maker to be to man, refuges from Judgment, 
signs of Redemption, and altars of Sanctification and Obedi- 
ence ; and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner 
the most touching and gracious, with the death, after his 
task had been accomplished, of the first anointed Priest; the 
death, in like manner, of the first inspired Lawgiver ; and, 
lastly, with the assumption of His office by the Eternal 
Priest, Lawgiver, and Saviour. 

Observe the connection of these three events. Although 
the time of the deaths of Aaron and Moses was hastened by 
God's displeasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest 
warrant for concluding that the manner of their deaths was 
intended to be grievous or dishonorable to them. Far from 
this : it cannot, I think, be doubted that in the denial of the 
permission to enter the Promised Land, the whole punish- 
ment of their sin was included ; and that as far as regarded 
the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for 
them by their Master in all tenderness and love ; and with full 
purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon earth. 
It might have seemed to us more honorable that both should 
have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the Taber- 
nacle, the congregation of Israel watching by their side ; and 
all whom they loved gathered together to receive the last 



80 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

message from the lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last 
blessing from the prayer of the anointed priest. But it was 
not thus they were permitted to die. Try to realize that 
going forth of Aaron from the midst of the congregation. 
He who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth 
now to offer up his own spirit. He who had stood, among 
them, between the dead and the living, and had seen the 
eyes of all that great multitude turned to him, that by his 
intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more, 
going forth now to meet the Angel of Death face to face, 
and deliver himself into his hand. Try if you cannot walk, 
in thought, with those two brothers, and the son, as they 
passed the outmost tents of Israel, and turned, while yet the 
dew lay round about the camp, towards the slopes of Mount 
Hor; talking together for the last time, as step by step, they 
felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour, be- 
neath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they 
climbed, and all the folded hills of Idumea, one by one sub- 
dued, showed amidst then' hollows in the haze of noon, the 
windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. 
But who shall enter into the thoughts of the High Priest, 
as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage ; and, 
through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching 
even to the dim peak of Sinai, the whole history of those 
forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of 
his own ministries revealed to him ; and that other Holy 
of Holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 81 

the mountain clouds the veil, the Armament of his Father's 
dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as 
he drew nearer his death ; until at last, on the shadeless sum- 
mit, — from him on whom sin was to be laid no more — from 
him, on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to 
press their graven fire no longer, — the brother and the son 
took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest. 

There is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep 
restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter ; 
but the death of Moses himself is more easily to be conceived, 
and had in it circumstances still more touching, as far as 
regards the external scene. For forty years Moses had not 
been alone. The care and burden of all the people, the weight 
of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him con- 
tinually. The multitude had been laid upon him as if he had 
conceived them; their tears had been his meat, night and 
day, until he had felt as if God had withdrawn His favor from 
him, and he had prayed that he might be slain, and not see his 
wretchedness. And now, at last, the command came, " Get 
thee up into this mountain. " The weary hands that had been so 
long stayed up against the enemies of Israel, might lean again 
upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for the shep- 
herd's prayer — for the shepherd's slumber. Not strange to 
his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the 
bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of 
Abarim ; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters 
of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the 



82 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

cliffs, indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines ; 
scenes such as those among which, with none, as now, be- 
side him but God, he had led his flocks so often ; and which 
he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed 
power, to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill 
the desert with songs of deliverance. It was not to embitter 
the last hours of his life that God restored to him, for a clay, 
the beloved solitudes he had lost ; and breathed the peace of 
the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world in which 
he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that mist 
of dying blue ; — all sin, all wandering soon to be forgotten 
for ever ; the Dead Sea — a type of God's anger understood by 
him, of all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open 
her mouth, and the sea his depth, to overwhelm the com- 
panies of those who contended with his Master — laid wave- 
less beneath him; and beyond it, the fair hills of Judah, and 
the soft plains and banks of Jordan, purple in the evening 
light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their 
distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. There, 
with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down 
upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to contend 
for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armor. We 
do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the 
chariot of fire came down from heaven ; but was his death 
less noble, whom his Lord Himself buried in the vales of 
Moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the 
knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 83 

in the fulness of time, to talk with that Lord, upon Hermon, 
of the death that He should accomplish at Jerusalem? 

And lastly let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to 
the cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. We are 
all of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing 
mystical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of Christ 
for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, 
merely as a manifestation of His divinity by brightness of 
heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, 
intended to strengthen the faith of His three chosen apostles. 
And in this, as in many other events recorded by the Evangel- 
ists, we lose half the meaning and evade the practical power 
upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea 
that our Lord was " perfect man," " tempted in all things 
like as we are." Our preachers are continually trying, in all 
manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the Divinity 
with the Manhood, an explanation which certainly involves 
first their being able to describe the nature of Deity itself, 
or, in plain words, to comprehend Gocl. They never can ex- 
plain, in any one particular, the union of the natures ; they 
only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the 
entireness of either. The thing they have to do is precisely 
the contrary of this — to insist upon the entireness of both. 
We never think of Christ enough as God, never enough as 
Man; the instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss 
of the Divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to 
miss of the Humanity. We are afraid to harbor in our o^ n 



84 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of 
our Lord, as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human 
soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life as a 
finite creature is ; and yet one half of the efficiency of His 
atonement, and the whole of the efficiency of His example, de- 
pends on His having been this to the full. 

Consider, therefore, the Transfiguration as it relates to the 
human feelings of our Lord. It was the first definite prepara- 
tion for His death. He had foretold it to His disciples six 
clays before ; then takes with Him the three chosen ones into 
"an high mountain apart." From an exceeding high mount- 
ain, at the first taking on Him the ministry of life, He had 
beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their 
glory; now, on a high mountain, He takes upon Him the 
ministry of death. Peter and they that were with Him, as 
in Gethsemane were heavy with sleep. Christ's work had to 
be clone alone. 

The tradition is, that the Mount of Transfiguration was the 
summit of Tabor; but Tabor is neither a high mountain, nor 
was it in any sense a mountain " apart; " being in those years 
both inhabited and fortified. All the immediately preceding 
ministries of Christ had been at Cesarea Philippi. There is 
no mention of travel southward in the six days that inter- 
vened between the warning given to His disciples, and the 
going up into the hill. What other hill could it be than the 
southward slope of that goodly mountain, Hermon, which is 
indeed the centre of all the Promised Land, from the enter- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 85 

ing in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt ; the mount of fruit- 
fulness, from which the springs of Jordan descended to the 
valleys of Israel. Along its mighty forest avenues, until the 
grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, His feet dashed in 
the dew of Hermon, He must have gone to pray His first 
recorded prayer about death ; and from the steep of it, be- 
fore He knelt, could see to the South all the dwelling-places of 
the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, 
the land of Zabulon and of Naphtali, Galilee of the nations ; — 
could see, even with His human sight, the gleam of that lake 
by Capernaum and Chorazin, and many a place loved by Him, 
and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto 
them desolate ; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the 
hills above Nazareth, sloping down to His old home ; hills on 
which yet the stones lay loose, that had been taken up to cast 
at Him, when He left them for ever. 

" And as He prayed, two men stood by Him." Among the 
many ways in which we miss the help and hold of Scripture, 
none is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as 
man, Christ was free from the Fear of Death. . How could 
He then have been tempted as we are? since among all the 
trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible 
than that of Fear. It had to be borne by Him, indeed, in a 
unity, which we can never comprehend, with the fore-knowl- 
edge of victory — as His sorrow for Lazarus, with the con- 
sciousness of the power to restore him; but it had to be 
borne, and that in its full earthly terror ; and the presence of 



86 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two 
at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself 
for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto 
Him ; now, in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for 
the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from the 
grave. 

But from the grave conquered. One, from that tomb under 
Abarim, which His own hand had sealed so long ago ; the 
other from the rest into which he had entered, without see- 
ing corruption. There stood by Him Moses and Elias, and 
spake of His decease. Then, when the prayer is ended, 
the task accepted, first, since the star paused over Him at 
Bethlehem, the full glory falls upon Him from heaven, and 
the testimony is borne to His everlasting Sonship and power. 
— ' ' Hear ye Him. " 

If, in their remembrance of these things, and in their en- 
deavor to follow in the footsteps of their Master, religious 
men of by-gone days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, 
forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared, the duties they 
owed to the active world, we may perhaps pardon them the 
more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we neither 
seek any influence for good, nor submit to it unsought, in 
scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive 
as inspired, together with their Lord, retired whenever they 
had any task or trial laid upon them needing more than their 
usual strength of spirit. Nor, perhaps, should we have un- 
prolitably entered into the mind of the earlier ages, if among 



TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 87 

our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of the snowy 
mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit 
the memory of the hour in which their Creator, among their 
solitudes, entered on His travail for the salvation of our 
race ; and indulge the dream, that as the naming and trem- 
bling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments of 
the manifesting of His terror on Sinai — these pure and 
white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to 
the earth, are the appointed memorials of that Light of His 
Mercy, that fell, snow-like, on the Mount of Transfiguration. 

The higher mountains have their scenes of power and vast- 
ness, their blue precipices and cioucl-like snows ; why should 
they also have the best and fairest colors given to their 
foreground rocks, and overburden the human mind with won- 
der, while the less majestic scenery, tempting us to the ob- 
servance of details for which amidst the higher mountains 
we had no admiration left, is yet in the beauty of those very 
details, as inferior as it is in its scale of magnitude? I be- 
lieve the answer must be, simply, that it is not good for man 
to live among what is most beautiful; that he is a creature 
incapable of satisfaction by anything upon earth ; and that 
to allow him habitually to possess, in any kind whatsoever, 
the utmost that earth can give, is the surest way to cast him 
into lassitude or discontent. 

If the most exquisite orchestral music could be continued 
without a pause for a series of years, and children were 



88 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

brought up and educated in the room in which it was per- 
petually resounding, I believe their enjoyment of music, or 
understanding of it would be small. And an accurately par- 
alleled effect seems to be produced, upon the powers of contem- 
plation, by the redundant and ceaseless loveliness of the high 
mountain districts. The faculties are paralyzed by the abun- 
dance, and cease to be capable of excitement, except by other 
subjects of interest than those which present themselves to 
the eye. So that it is, in reality, better for mankind that the 
forms of their common landscape should offer no violent 
stimulus to the emotions, — that the gentle upland, browned by 
the bending furrows of the plough, and the fresh sweep of the 
chalk down, and the narrow winding of the copse-clad dingle, 
should be more frequent scenes of human life than the Ar- 
cadias of cloud-capped mountain or luxuriant vale ; and that 
while humbler sources of interest are given to each of us 
around the homes to which we are restrained for the greater 
part of our lives, these mightier and stronger glories should 
become the object of adventure, — at once the cynosures of 
the fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy memory, 
and the winter's tale of age. 

* * 
One does not. instinctively, think or speak of a "beautiful 
Precipice.'* They have, however, their beauty, and it is in- 
finite. ... I commend, therefore, the precipice to the 
artist's patience — though one of the most difficult of sub- 
jects, it is one of the kindest of sitters. A group of trees 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 89 

changes the color of its leafage from week to week, and its 
position from clay to clay ; it is sometimes languid with heat, 
and sometimes heavy with rain, the torrent swells or falls 
in shower or sun ; the best leaves of the foreground may be 
dined upon by cattle, or trampled by unwelcome investigators 
of the chosen scene. But the cliff can neither be eaten or 
trampled down; neither bowed by the shower or withered 
by the heat ; it is always ready for us when we are inclined 
to labor ; will always wait for us when we would rest ; and, 
what is best of all, will always talk to us when we are in- 
clined to converse. With its own patient and victorious 
presence, cleaving daily through cloud after cloud, and reap- 
pearing still through the tempest drift, lofty and serene amidst 
the passing rents of blue, it seems partly to rebuke, and 
partly to guard, and partly to calm and chasten, the agitations 
of the feeble human soul that watches it ; and that must be 
indeed a dark perplexity, or a greivous pain, which will not 
be in some degree enlightened or relieved by the vision of it, 
when the evening shadows are blue on its foundation, and 
the last rays of the sunset resting in the fair height of its 
golden Fortitude. 

I can hardly conceive any one standing face to face with 
one of these towers of central rock, and yet not also asking 
himself : — " Is this indeed the actual first work of the Divine 
Master on which I gaze? Was this great precipice shaped by 
His finger as Adam was shaped out cf the dust? Were its 



90 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

clefts and ledges carved upon it by its Creator, as the letters 

were in the Table of the Law, and was it thus left to bear 

its eternal teaching to His beneficence among the clouds of 

heaven? " 

# 

No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing ; but 
we may see more and more of it the longer we look. Every 
individual temper will see something different in it ; but sup- 
posing the tempers honest, all the differences are there. 
Every advance in our acuteness of perception will show us 
something new; but the old and first discerned things will 
still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the 
new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its 
harmony with them, and more approved as a part of the In- 
finite truth. 

There are no natural objects out of which more can be thus 
learned than out of stones. They seem to have been created 
especially to reward a patient observer. Nearly all other ob- 
jects in nature can be seen to some extent, without patience, 
and are pleasant even in being half seen. Trees, clouds, and 
rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone 
under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stum- 
bling ; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, 
nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard 
heart, and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some 
reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought 
in it, more than in any other lowly feature of the landscape. 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 91 

For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain 

in miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, 

that, in a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can 

compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small 

scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one ; and 

taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the 

surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is 

more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill, more 

fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in color. 

# 

Two lessons are to be gathered from mountain decay . . . 
In the first, we find the unyielding rock ; undergoing no sud- 
den danger, and capable of no total fall, yet, in its hardness 
of heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves, 
and stress of wandering storm. Its fragments, fruitless and 
restless, are tossed into ever-changing heaps ; no labor of 
man can subdue them to his service, nor can his utmost pa- 
tience secure any dwelling-place among them. In this they 
are the type of all that humanity, which, suffering under no 
sudden punishment or sorrow, remains " stony ground," af- 
flicted, indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but 
only broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. Of 
this ground not "corn-giving," this "rough valley, neither 
eared nor sown," of the common world, it is said to those 
who have set up their idols in the wreck of it. " Among the 
smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; They, they are 
thy lot." 



92 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

# # 
A child's division of plants is into " trees and flowers." 
. . . For our present purposes, justifiable or not, it is the 
most suggestive and convenient. Plants are, indeed, broadly 
referable to two great classes. The first we may, perhaps, 
not inexpediently call Tented Plants. . . . The other great 
class of plants we may perhaps best call Building Plants. 
These will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise edifices 
above it. Each works hard with solemn forethought all its 
life. Perishing, it leaves its work in the form which will be 
most useful to its successors — its own monument, and their 
inheritance. These architectural edifices we call " Trees." 

In crowded foliage of large trees the disposition of each 
separate leaf is not so manifest. For there is a strange coin- 
cidence in this between trees and communities of men. 
When the community is small, people fall more easily into 
their places, and take, each in his place, a firmer standing 
than can be obtained by the individuals of a great nation. 
The members of a vast community are separately weaker, as 
an aspen or elm leaf is thin, tremulous, and directionless, 
compared with the spear-like setting and firm substance of a 
rhododendron or laurel leaf. The laurel and rhododendron 
are like the Athenian or Florentine republics ; the aspen like 
England — strong-trunked enough when put to proof, and 
very good for making cart-wheels of, but shaking pale with 
epidemic pains at every breeze. Nevertheless, the aspen has 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 93 

the better of the great nation, in that if yon take it bough by 
bough, you shall find the gentle law of respect and room-for 
each other truly observed by the leaves in such broken way 
as they can manage it ; but in the nation you will find every 
one scrambling for his neighbor's place. 

In many forms of flowers — foxglove, aloe, hemlock, or 
blossom of maize — the structure of the flowering part so far 
assimilates itself to that of a tree, that we not unnaturally 
think of a tree only as a large flower, or large remnant of 
flower run to seed. 

Of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind of 
man, it seems one of the most singular, that trees intended 
especially for the adornment of the wildest mountains should 
be in broad outline the most formal of trees. The vine, which 
is to be the companion of man, is waywarclly docile in its 
growth, falling into festoons beside his cornfields, or roof- 
ing his garden walks, or casting its shadow all summer upon 
his door. Associated always with the trimness of cultivation, 
it introduces all possible elements of sweet wildness. The 
pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and deso- 
late, brings into them all possible elements of order and pre- 
cision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though 
it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cow- 
slips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm 
and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a 



94 TBO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless 
grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the 
stem ; — it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the 
tree lives. 

The pine is trained to need nothing, and to endure every- 
thing. It is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring noth- 
ing but Tightness, content with restricted completion. Tall 
or short, it will be straight. Small or large, it will be round. 
. . . I wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment 
on these two great characters of the pine, its straightness 
and rounded perf ectness ; both wonderful, and in their issue 
lovely. ... I say first, its straightness. Because we 
constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to remem- 
ber only as characteristic examples of it those which have 
been disturbed by violent accident or disease. . . Never- 
theless, this is not the truest or universal expression of the 
pine's character. I said long ago, even of Turner, " Into the 
spirit of the pine he cannot enter," . . . the pine was 
strange to him, adverse to his delight in broad and flowing 
line : he refused its magnificent erectness. Magnificent ! nay, 
sometimes almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or hill 
yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft 
compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly 
its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self- 
contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a 
great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of man, looking 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 95 

up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible 
juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet mul- 
titudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it — upright, 
fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for ever. You can- 
not reach them, cannot cry to them: — those trees never 
heard human voice ; they are far above all sound but of the 
winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All com- 
fortless they stand between the two eternities of the Vacancy 
and the Rock; yet with such iron will, that the rock itself 
looks bent and shattered beside them — fragile, Aveak, incon- 
sistent compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and 
monotony of enchanted pride: — unnumbered, unconquer- 
able. 

Then note, farther, their perfectness. The impression on 
most people's minds must have been received more from pict- 
ures than reality, so far as I can judge ; — so ragged they 
think the pine ; whereas its chief character in health is green 
and full roundness. It stands compact, like one of its own 
cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a 
carved tree in some Elizabethan garden ; and instead of be- 
ing wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scen- 
ery ; for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs ; 
but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass or in happy 
isolation, allows no branch to be seen. Summit behind sum- 
mit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep 
the circlets of its boughs, so that there is nothing but green 



96 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

cone and green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one 
sense more cheerful than other foliage ; for it casts only a 
pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and 
chequers the ground with darkness ; but the pine, growing 
in scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald-bright. 
Its gloom is all its own ; narrowing into" the sky, it lets the 
sunshine strike clown to the dew. And if ever a superstitious 
feeling comes over me among the pine-glades, it is never 
tainted with the old German forest fear; but is only a more 
solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our Eng- 
glisli meadows; so that I have always called the prettiest 
pine glade in Chamouni "Fairies' Hollow." 

Notice in the pine its exquisite fineness. Other trees rise 
against the sky in clots and knots, but this in fringes. You 
never see the edges of it, so subtle are they ; and for this 
reason, it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable of the 
fiery change noticed by Shakespeare. When the sun rises 
behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a 
distance of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for 
about three or four degrees on each side of the sun, become 
trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker sky, and 
dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first this was owing 
to the actual lustre of the leaves; but I believe now it is 
caused by the cloud-dew upon them, — every minutest leaf 
carrying its diamond. It seems as if these trees, living always 
among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them ; 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 97 

and themselves the darkest of vegetation, could yet add 
splendof to the sun itself. Yefc» I have been more struck by 
their character of finished delicacy at a distance from the 
Central Alps, among the pastoral hills of the Emmenthal, or 
lowland districts of Berne, where they are set in groups be- 
tween the cottages, whose shingle roofs (they also of pine) 
of deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and 
orange in the autumn sunshine, gleam on the banks and lawns 
of hill-side, — endless lawns, mounded, and studded, and 
bossed all over with deeper green hay-heaps, orderly set, like 
jewelry. And amidst this delicate delight of cottage and 
field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, scented as with 
frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and 
crystal white, looking as if they would break with a touch, 
like needles; and their arabesque of dark leaf pierced through 
and through by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where 
they follow each other, along the soft hill-ridges, up and 
down. 

I have watched them in such scenes with the deeper in- 
terest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most in- 
fluence on human character. The effect of other vegetation, 
however great, has been divided by mingled species ; elm and 
oak in England, poplar in France, birch in Scotland, olive in 
Italy and Spain, share their power with inferior trees. . . . 
But the tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the 
life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon a nation. The 
Northern people, century after century, lived under one or 



9 8 THO UGHTS F BE A UTY. 

other of the two great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both 
infinite. They dwelt amidst the forests, or they wandered on 
the waves, and saw no end, nor any other horizon : — still the 
dark green trees, or- the dark green waters, jagged the dawn 
with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements of 
imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, 
were brought down by the Norwegian and the Goth against 
the dissoluteness or degradation of the South of Europe, were 
taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the 
pine. 

Tree-worship may have taken a dark form when associated 
with the Draconian one ; or opposed as in Judea, to a purer 
faith ; but in itself, I believe it is always healthy, and though 
it retains little definite hieroglyphic power in subsequent re- 
ligion, it becomes instead of symbolic, real; the flowers and 
trees are themselves beheld and beloved with a half -worship- 
ping delight, which is always noble and healthful. 

A very old forest tree is a thing subject to the same laws 
of nature as ourselves ; it is an energetic being ; liable to and 
approaching death ; its age is written on every spring ; and 
because we see it is susceptible of life and annihilation like 
we are, we imagine it must be capable of the same feelings 
and possess the same faculties, and above all other meanings 
it is always telling us about the past, never pointing to the 
future ; we appeal to it, as to a thing which has seen and 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 99 

felt during a life similar to our own, though of ten times its 
duration, and therefore receive from it a perpetual impres- 
sion of antiquity. 

* 

The resources of trees are not developed until they have 
difficulty to contend with ; neither their tenderness of broth- 
erly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their 
ways of various life where there is contracted room for them ; 
talking* to each other with restrained branches. The various 
action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, 
stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of 
glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, 
crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climb- 
ing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sud- 
den dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies 
at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession 
over the heavenward ridges; nothing of this can be con- 
ceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the low- 
land forest. 

# # 
Being . . . prepared for us in all ways, and made beau- 
tiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instru- 
ments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless 
affection and admiration from us, become, in proportion to 
their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right 
temper of mind and way of life ; so that no one can be far 
wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one 



100 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

is assuredly wrong in both, who does not love them, if his 
life has brought them in his way. It is clearly possible to do 
without them, for the great companionship of the sea and 
sky are all that sailors need ; and many a noble heart has been 
taught the best it had to learn between dark and stone walls. 
Still if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne 
to them is a sure test of its purity. And it is a sorrowful 
proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the " country," 
in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto 
been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that words 
the " countryman," " rustic," " clown," " paysan," "villager," 
still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the 
words " townsman" and "citizen." 

Sometimes I cannot but think that the trees of the earth 
are capable of a kind of sorrow. 

I challenge the untravelled English reader to tell me what 
an olive-tree is like ? 

I know he cannot answer my challenge. He has no more 
idea of an olive-tree than if olives grew only in the fixed 
stars. Let him meditate a little on this one fact, and con- 
sider its strangeness, and what a wilful and constant closing 
of the eyes to the most important truths it indicates on the 
part of the modern artist. Observe, a want of perception, 
not of science. I do not want painters to tell me any scien- 
tific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 101 

have felt and seen the olive-tree; to have loved it for Christ's 
sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was 
to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which 
stood at God's right hand, when He founded the earth and 
established the heavens. To have loved it even to the hoary 
dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as 
if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it 
for ever; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writh- 
ings of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of 
its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the 
sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, 
and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its 
topmost boughs — the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the 
fatherless, and the widow, — and, more than all, the softness 
of the mantle, silver gray, and tender like the down on a 
bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of 
the mountains ; these it had been well for them to have seen 
and drawn, whatever they have left unstudied in the gallery. 

Leaves are the feeders of the plant. Their own orderly 
habits of succession must not interfere with their main busi- 
ness of finding food. Where the sun and air are, the leaf 
must go, whether it be out of order or not. So, therefore, 
in any group, the first consideration with the J'oung leaves is 
much like that of young bees, how to keep out of each other's 
way, that every one may leave its neighbors as much free-air 
pasture as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for itself. 



102 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Every single leaf -cluster presents the general aspect of a 
little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged 
to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and in- 
fringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the 
privileges of other people in their neighborhood. 

The order of the leaves is one of soft and subdued conces- 
sion. Patiently each awaits its appointed time, accepts its 
prepared place, yields its required observance. Under every 
oppression of external accident, the group yet follows a law 
laid down in its own heart ; and all the members of it, whether 
in sickness or health, in strength or languor, combine to carry 
out this first and last heart-law ; receiving, and seeming to 
desire for themselves and for each other, only life which they 
may communicate, and loveliness which they may reflect. 

There is an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. They 
do not grow each to his own liking, till they run against one 
another, and then turn back sulkily; but by a watchful in- 
stinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' courses, as 
ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of their edged tis- 
sues, guide themselves by the sense of each other's remote 
presence and by a watchful penetration of leafy purpose in 
the far future. So that every shadow which one casts on 
the next, and every glint of sun which each reflects to the 
next, and every touch which in toss of storm each receives 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 103 

from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advanc- 
ing form, and direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of 
every fold and the current of every vein. 

We find the beauty of the buildings of the leaves consists, 
from the first step of it to the last, in its showing their per- 
fect fellowship ; and a single aim uniting them under circum- 
stances of various distress, trial, and pleasure. Without the 
fellowship, no beauty; without the steady purpose, no beauty; 
without trouble, and death, no beauty; without individual 
pleasure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be consistent 
with the universal good, no beauty. 

We men, sometimes, in what we presume to be humility 
compare ourselves with leaves ; but we have as yet no right 
to do so. The leaves may well scorn the comparison. We 
who live for ourselves, and neither know how to use nor keep 
the work of past time, may humbly learn — as from the ant, 
foresight — from the leaf, reverence. The power of every 
great people, as of every living tree, depends on its not effac- 
ing, but confirming and concluding, the labors of its ances- 
tors. Looking back to the history of nations, we may date 
the beginning of their decline from the moment when they 
ceased to be reverent in heart, and accumulative in hand 
and brain ; from the moment when the redundant fruit of age 
hid in them the hollowness of heart, whence the simplicities 
of custom and sinews of tradition had withered away. Had 



104 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

men but guarded the righteous laws, and protected the pre- 
cious works of their fathers, with half the industry they have 
given to change and ravage, they would not now have been 
seeking vainly, in millennial visions and mechanic servitudes 
the accomplishment of the promises made to them so long 
ago : "As the days of a tree are the days of my people, and 
mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands ; they shall 
not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble ; for they are 
the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with 
them." 

This lesson we have to take from the leaf's life. One more 
we may receive from its death. If ever in autumn a pensive- 
ness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fading, may 
we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monuments ? 
Behold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch and aisle, the 
avenues of the valleys ; the fringes of the hills ! So stately, 
— so eternal ; the joy of man, the comfort of all living crea- 
tures, the glory of the earth, — they are but the monuments 
of those poor leaves that flit faintly past us to die. Let them 
not pass, without our understanding their last counsel and ex- 
ample ; that we also, careless of monument by the grave, 
may build it in the world — monument by which men may 
be taught to remember, not where we die, but where we 
lived. 

Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, 
quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Noth- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 105 

ing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very 
little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate 
long lines meeting in a point, — not a perfect point neither, 
but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or appar- 
ently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; 
made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-mor- 
row to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow 
stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres 
of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all 
the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all 
strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for 
food, — stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented 
citron, burdened vine, — there be any by man so deeply loved, 
by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble 
green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar 
significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle 
which, of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the 
multitude as the most impressive, — the miracle of the loaves, 
— commanded the people to sit down by companies, "upon 
the green grass." He was about to feed them with the princi- 
ple produce of earth and the sea, the simplest representations 
of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of the herb ; 
He bade them sit clown upon the herb itself, which was as 
great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect 
fruit, for their sustenance : thus, in this single order and act, 
when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the 
Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and suste- 



106 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

nance of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the 
leafy families of the earth. 

And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe 
merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark 
ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those 
soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. The fields ! Follow 
but for a little time the thoughts of all that w T e ought to recog- 
nize in those words. All spring and summer is in them, the 
walks by silent scented paths, — the rests in noonday heat, 
the joy of flocks and herds, — the power of all shepherd life 
and meditation, the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in 
emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows, where else 
it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust, 
— pastures beside the pacing brooks — soft banks and knolls 
of lowly hills — thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue 
line of lifted sea, — crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or 
smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by 
happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving 
voices ; all these are summed in those simple words ; and these 
are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this 
heavenly gift, in our own land ; though still, as we think of it 
longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakspeare's 
peculiar joy. would open on us more and more, yet we have it 
but in part. Go out, in the spring time among the meadows 
that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of 
their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians 
and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 107 

as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching 
boughs all veiled and dim with blossom, — paths that forever 
droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping 
down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded 
here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with 
fainter sweetness, — look up towards the higher hills, where 
the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long in- 
lets among the shadows of the pines ; and we may, perhaps, 
at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th 
Psalm, " He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains." 

There are several lessons symbolically connected with this 
subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the 
peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for 
the service of man, are its humility and cheerfulness. Its 
humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service — 
appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, 
in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suf- 
fering. You roll it, and it is stronger the next day ; you mow 
it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful ; you 
tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. Spring 
comes, and it rejoices with all the earth — glowing with va- 
riegated flame of flowers, waving in soft depth of fruitful 
strength. "Winter comes, and though it will not mock its 
fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, 
and turn colorless or leafless as they. It is always green; 
and it is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost. 



108 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

The two characters — of humility and joy under trial — are 
exactly those which most definitely distinguish the Chris- 
tian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan pos- 
sessed was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It 
began in the elevation of his own nature ; it ended but in the 
" verde smalto " — the hopeless green — of the Elysian fields. 
But the Christian virtue is rooted in self-debasement and 
strengthened under suffering by gladness of hope. And re- 
membering this, it is curious to observe how utterly without 
gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching the flower- 
ing grass and what strange discords of expression arise 
sometimes in consequence. There is one recurring once or 
twice in Homer, which has always pained me. He says, 
' ' the Greek army was on the fields as thick as flowers in the 
spring." It might be so; but flowers in spring time are not 
the image by which Dante would have numbered soldiers on 
the path of battle. Dante could not have thought of the 
flowering of the grass but as associated with happiness. 
There is a still deeper significance in a passage from Homer, 
describing Ulysses casting himself down on the rushes and 
the corn-giving land at the river shore, — the rushes and corn 
being to him only good for rest and sustenance, — when we 
compare it with that in which Dante tells us he was ordered 
to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered Purgatory, 
to gather a rush, and gird himself with it, it being to him the 
emblem, not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement^ 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 109 

the rush (or reecl) being the only plant which can grow there ; 
" no plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live 
on that shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement 
of its waves." It cannot but strike the reader singularly how 
deep and harmonious a significance runs through all these 
words of Dante — how every syllable of them, the more we 
penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought ! For, follow 
up this image of girding with the reed, under trial, and see 
to whose feet it will lead us. As the grass of the earth, 
thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place 
where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by 
companies upon the green grass ; so the grass of the waters, 
thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of afflic- 
tion, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into 
our Lord's hand for His sceptre ; and in the crown of thorns, 
and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of 
the Christian ages — that all glory was to be begun in suffer- 
ing, and all power in humility. 

Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the 
simplest of all, from Isaiah xl. 6, we find, the grass and 
flowers are types, in their passing, of the passing of human 
life, and in their excellence, of the excellence of human life ; 
and this in a twofold way; first by their Beneficence, and 
then, by their Endurance ; — the grass of the earth, in giving 
the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and 
stroke of scythe ; and the grass of the waters, in giving its 
freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the wave. 



1 10 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

But understood in the broad human and Divine sense, the 
"herb yielding seed " includes a third family of plants, and 
fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the great 
family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the three offices 
of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this ful- 
filment; consider the association of the linen garment and 
the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the furni- 
ture of the tabernacle ; and consider how the rush has been, 
in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human 
foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth 
by the three families of plants ; not arbitrarily, or fancifully 
associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for 
us by Scriptural words : "1st. Cheerfulness or joyful se- 
renity; in the grass for food and beauty. "Consider the 
lilies how they grow, they toil not; neither do they spin." 
2d. Humility : in the grass for rest. " A bruised reed shall 
He not break." 3d. Love : in the grass for clothing. " The 
smoking flax shall He not quench." And then, finally, ob- 
serve the confirmation of these last two images in, I suppose, 
the most important prophecy, relating to the future state of 
the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament, 
namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezckiel. The 
measures of the Temple of God are to be taken ; and because 
it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever 
can be taken, the angel has " a line of flax in his hand, and 
a measuring reed." The use of the line was to measure the 
land, and of the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings ; 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 1 1 

so the buildings of the church, or its labors, are to be 
measured by humility, and its territory or land, by love. 

The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been 
measured, to the world's sorrow, by another than flaxen line, 
burning with the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Chris- 
tian charity ; and perhaps the best lesson which we can finally 
take to ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediaeval 
landscape is the memory that, in spite of all the fettered 
habits of thought of his age," this great Dante, this inspired 
exponent of what lay deepest at the heart of the early church, 
placed his terrestrial paradise where there had ceased to be 
fence or division, and where the grass of the earth was bowed 
down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves that bore 
with them the forgetf ulness of evil. 

The Greek delighted in the grass for its usefulness; the 
mediaeval, as also we moderns, for its color and beauty. 
But both dwell on it as the first element of the lovely land- 
scape; Dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen 
enough comforted in Hades by having even the image of green 
grass put beneath their feet ; the happy resting-place in Pur- 
gatory has no other delight than its grass and flowers; and, 
finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda pause 
where the Lethe stream first bends the blades of grass. 

Spires of the fine grasses . . . minute, granular, feath- 
ery, or downy-seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctua- 



1 12 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

tions, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of 
the nearer fields ; and casting a gossamered grayness and soft- 
ness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away ; mysterious 
evermore, not only with dew in the morning, or mirage at 
noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each 
a little belfry of grain-bells, all a-chime. 

Lichen, and mosses — Meek creatures ! the first mercy of 
the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks; 
creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender 
honor the scarred disgrace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on the 
trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I know 
of, will say what these mosses are. None are delicate enough, 
none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell 
of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green, — the 
starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the Rock 
Spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass — the traceries of 
intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, 
burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy 
traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and 
framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not 
be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token; but 
of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child 
his pillow. And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its 
last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant 
and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichens take up their 
watch by the head-stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 13 

bearing grasses have done their parts for a time, but these 
do service forever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for 
the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. 
Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most 
honored of the earth-children. Unfading, as motionless, the 
worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in 
lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To 
them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weav- 
ing of the dark, eternal tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow- 
pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imag- 
ery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they 
share also its endurance ; and while the winds of departing 
spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, 
and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its 
cowslip-gold, — far above, among the mountains, the silver of 
lichen-spots rest, star-like, on the stone , and the gathering 
orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects 
the sunset of a thousand years. 

* # 
Mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately 
to the task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of color 
in their power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, 
but will gather over it in little brown bosses, like small cush- 
ions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby silk and 
gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and gray, with 
lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen 
leaves, and minute clusters of upright oranges stalks with 



1 1 4 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and faint 
purple passing into black, all woven together, and following 
with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulations 
of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with color so 
that it can receive no more ; and instead of looking rugged, 
or cold, or stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at 
heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft, dark, leopard's skin, 
embroidered with arabesque of purple and silver. But in the 
lower ranges this is not so. The mosses grow in more inde- 
pendent spots, not in such a clinging and tender way over 
the whole surface. 

"What can we conceive of that first Eden which we might 
not yet win back, if we chose? It was a place full of flowers, 
we say. Well ; the flowers are always striving to grow wher- 
ever we suffer them ; and the fairer the closer. There may in- 
deed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man ; but assur- 
edly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier 
than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side by side, leaf 
overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white and red with them, 
if we cared to have it so. 

It is better to know the habits of one plant than the names 
of a thousand; and wiser to be happily familiar with those 
that grown in the nearest field, than arduously cognizant of 
all that plume the isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Moun- 
tains of the Moon. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 115 

The flower is the end or proper object of the seed, not the 
seed of the flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may 
be ; not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. The flower 
itself is the creature which the spirit makes ; only, in connec- 
tion with its perfectness, is placed the giving birth to its 
successor. 

The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is the part of 
the plant's form developed at the moment of its intensest 
life ; and this inner rapture is usually marked externally for 
us by the flush of one or more of the primary colors. What 
the character of the flower shall be, depends entirely upon 
the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit has 
been put. Sometimes the life is put into its outer sheath, 
and then the outer sheath becomes white and pure, and full 
of strength and grace ; sometimes the life is put into the com- 
mon leaves just under the blossom, and they become scarlet or 
purple ; sometimes the life is put into the stalks of the flower, 
and they flush blue; sometimes into its outer enclosure or 
calyx ; mostly into its inner cup ; but, in all cases, the presence 
of the strongest life is asserted by characters in which the hu- 
man sight takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with 
distinct reference to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, 
evidence of having been produced by the power of the same 
spirit as our own. 

* * 
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity ; 
children love them ; quiet, tender, contented ordinary people 



116 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

love them as they grow; luxurious and disorderly people 
rejoice in them gathered. They are the cottagers' treasures; 
and in the crowded town mark, as with a little broken frag- 
ment of a rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose 

hearts rest the covenant of peace. 

* 

Compare Milton's flowers in Lycidas with Perclita's. In 
Milton it happens, I think, generally, and in the case before 
us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken 
with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of 
iron and part of clay. 

" Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, 

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, — 

The glowing violet, 

The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears : " 

Then hear Perdita : — 

"O, Proserpina, 
Tor the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
From Dis's wagon ! daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 117 

That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady- 
Most incident to maids ; " 

Observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into 
the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched 
them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of 
Proserpina's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and 
never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton 
sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that un- 
happy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of 
paper-staining, would have been the most precious to us of all. 
" There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 

# 

The sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually 
reaches so far as to the conception of life in the plant, and so 
to love, as with Shelley, of the sensitive plant, and Shakes- 
peare always, as he taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia 
and Perdita, and Wordsworth always, as of the daffodils, and 
the celendine. 

" It cloth not love the shower, nor seek the cold. 
This neither is its courage, nor its choice, 
But its necessity in being old." 

And so all other great poets — that is to say great seers ; nor 
do I believe that any mind, however rude, is without some 
slight perception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in breath- 



1 18 THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 

less things, as most certainly there are ; none but feel instinct- 
ive delight in the appearance of such enjoyment. . . . 
The pleasure afforded by every organic form is in proportion 
to its appearance of healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, 
setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of color 
and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the 
snow-wreath ; we find in and through all this, certain signs 
pleasant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the 
particular individual plant itself. 

# 

I have in my hand a small red poppy which I gathered on 
Whit Sunday on the palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely 
simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and flame, a scarlet 
cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among the wild grass far 
away, like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You 
cannot have a more complete, a more stainless, type of flower 
absolute ; inside and outside, all flower. No sparing of color 
anywhere — no outside coarseness — no interior secrecies; 
open as the sunshine that creates it ; fine-finished on both 
sides, down to the extremest point of insertion ; and robed in 
the purple of the Caesars. 

Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they 
admire a rose so much more than all other flowers. If they 
consider, they will find, first, that red is, in a delicately gra- 
dated state, the loveliest of all pure colors; and secondly, 
that in the rose there is no shadow, except what is composed 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 19 

of color. All its shadows are fuller in color than its lights, 

owing to the translucency and reflective power of its leaves. 

# 

The bird. . . . It is little more than a drift of the air 
brought into form by plumes ; the air is in all its quills, it 
breathes through its whole frame and flesh, and glows with 
air in its flying, like blown flame ; it rests upon the air, sub- 
dues it, surpasses it, outruns it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, 
conquering itself, ruling itself. Also in the throat of the 
bird is given the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself 
is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song. 
As we may imagine the wild form of the cloud closed into the 
perfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the cloud 
into its ordered and commanded voice ; unwearied, rippling 
through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all in- 
tense passion through the soft spring nights, burstiug into 
acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and 
twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, 
like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and 
ruffle the petals of the wild rose. Also upon the plumes of 
the bird are put the colors of the air ; on these the gold of 
the cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetousness ; the 
rubies of the clouds . . . the vermilion of the cloud-bar, 
and the flame of the cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud, 
and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep wells of the 
sky — all these, seized by the creatiug spirit and woven into 
films and threads of plume; with wave on wave following 



120 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, in- 
finite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea- 
sand ; even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up, 
between the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. 
And so the spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this created 
form ; and it becomes, through twenty centuries, the symbol 
of divine help, descending as the Fire, to speak, but as the 

Dove to bless. 

* 

The bird has exactly the degree of emotion, the extent of 
science, and the command of art, which are necessary for its 
happiness. ... It was a bullfinch's nest, which had been 
set in the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended 
foundation. And the bird had built this storey of her nest 
with withered stalks of clematis blossom ; and with nothing 
else. The twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the 
branches heads all at the outside, producing an intricate 
Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently ar- 
ranged with triumphant pleasure, in the art of basket mak- 
ing, and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental form. 

Why should not our nests be as interesting things to angels, 
as bullfinch's are to us? 

I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the 
beak of a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather 
its two hands. For, as its arms and hands are turned into 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 121 

wings, all it has to depend upon, in economical and practical 
life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at once its sword, 
its carpenter's tool-box, and its dressing-case ; partly also its 
musical instrument; all this besides its function of seizing 
and preparing the food, in which functions alone it has to be 
a trap, carving-knife, and teeth all in one. 

The swallow . . . understand the beauty of the bird 
which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies 
for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. 
Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least 
these four thousand years. She has been their companion, 
not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the thresh- 
old; companion only endeared by departure, and showing 
better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. T}-pe 
sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality ; 
type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy ; 
and in her feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of 
sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald 
of our summer, she glances through our days of gladness ; 
numberer of our years, she would teach us to apply our hearts 
to wisdom; — and } r et, so little have we regarded her, that 
this very daj r , scarcely able to gather from all I can find told of 
her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, 
I can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her journey- 
ing; I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses 
the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of 



122 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

her return. Remaining thus blind and careless to the true 
ministries of the humble creature whom God has really sent 
to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded 
by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with 
majesty by giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and 
shade of the bird's plume ; — and after all, it is well for us, 
if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His temples 
marble-built, we think that, " with angels and archangels, 
and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His 
glorious name" — well for us, if our attempt be not only an 
insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and un- 
intended praise of " the Swallow twittering from her straw- 
built shed." 

If you are not inclined to look at the wings of birds, which 
God has given you to handle and to see, much less are you 
to contemplate, or draw imaginations of the wings of an- 
gels, which you can't see. Know your own world first — 
not denying any other, but being quite sure that the place in 
which you are now put is the place with which you are now 
concerned; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods 
themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, 
than that, by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, 
you can represent the aspect of gods. 

Scarlet color, — or pure red, intensified by expression of 
light, is of all the three primitive colors, that which is most 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 123 

distinctive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, 
connected with simple shade, but red is an entirely abstract 
color. It is red to which the color blind are blind, as if to show 
us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort 
of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this 
color. Observe farther that it is the color which the sun- 
beams take in passing through the earth's atmosphere. The 
rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing over 
the earth. It is also concentrated in the blood of man. 
* * 
I have already insisted upon the sacredness of color, and 
its necessary connection with all pure and noble feeling . . . 
but perhaps I have not yet insisted on the simplest and read- 
iest to hand of all proofs — the way namely, in which God has 
employed color in His creation as the unvarying accompani- 
ment of all that is purest, most innocent, and most precious ; 
while for things precious only in material uses, or danger- 
ous, common colors are reserved. Consider for a little 
while what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were 
gray, all leaves black, and the sky brown. . . . Then ob- 
serve how constantly innocent things are bright in color, I 
do not mean that the rule is invariable . . . there are 
beautiful colors on the leopard and tiger, and the berries of 
the nightshade . . . but take a wider view of nature, 
and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, 
butterflies, birds, gold-fish, rubies., opals, and corals, with 
alligators, hippopotami, lions, wolves, stinging things in 



121 TIIO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

general, and you will find then how the question stands be- 
tween the colorist and chiaroscurists — which of them have 
nature and life on their side, and which have sin and death. 

Finally : the ascertainment of the sanctity of color is not 
left to human sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. 
Blue, purple and scarlet, with white and gold as appointed in 
the Tabernacle ; this chord is the fixed base of all coloring 
with the workmen of every great age ; the purple and scarlet 
will be found constantly employed by the noble painters, in 
various unison, to the exclusion in general of pure crimson; it 
is the harmony described by Herodotus as used in the battle- 
ments of Ecbatana, and the invariable base of all beautiful 
missal-painting. ... All men completely organized and 
justly tempered enjoy color; it is meant for the perpetual 
comfort and delight of the human heart; it is richly bestowed 
on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign 
and seal of perfection in them ; being associated with life in the 
human body, with light in the sky, with purity and hardness 
in the earth, — death, night, and pollution of all kinds being 
colorless. 

I trust that the time may soon come when the beneficent 
and beautiful gifts of color may be rightly felt and wisely em- 
ployed, and when the variegated fronts of our houses may 
render the term "stone-color" as little definite in the mind 
of the architect as that of "flower color" would be to the 
horticulturist. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 125 

There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in 
which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort 
can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, 
even when under the same circumstances, dead and lifeless 
beside her living color; the green of a growing leaf, the 

scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can reach. 

# 

# # 

"We have been speaking of the ordinary effects of daylight 
on ordinary colors, and we repeat that no gorgeousness of the 
pallet can reach even these. But it is a widely different thing 
when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does something 
extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. 

She has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, 
but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability 
of color are in these sunsets among the high clouds. I speak 
especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his 
light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a 
zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable 
delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common 
daylight be pure snow white, and which give therefore fair 
field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multi- 
tude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The 
whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, 
mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into 
massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, 
crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there 



126 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind, — things 
which can only be conceived while they are visible — the 
intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all, 
— showing here deep and pure, and lightless, there, modu- 
lated by the filmy formless body of the transparent vapor till it 
is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and blue. 

The loveliest colors ever granted to human sight, those of 
morning and of evening clouds before or after rain, are pro- 
duced in minute particles of finely-divided water, or perhaps 
sometimes ice. 

There are some landscapes whose best character is spark- 
ling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of bril- 
liancy, or embracing it, as in the fields of summer sea, or 
summer land : 

" Calm and deep peace, on this high wold, 
And in the dews that drench the furze, 
And in the silvery gossamers, 
That twinkle into green and gold." 
# 

There are three things to which man is born — labor and 
sorrow and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness 
and its nobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There 
is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and 
noble joy. But you must not think to avoid the corruption 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 127 

of these things by doing without the things themselves. Noi 
can any life be right that has not all three. Labor without 
joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow without 
labor is base. Joy without labor is base. 

These are three Material things, not only useful, but essen- 
tial to Life. No one "knows how to live "till he has got 
them. These are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 

There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, butes- 
sential to Life. No one knows how to live till he has got 
them. These are Admiration, Hope, and Love. 

# 

Do your own work well, whether it be for life or death. 
Help other people at times when you can, and seek to avenge 
no injury. — Be sure you can obey good laws before you seek 
to alter bad ones. 

* * 

God has lent us the earth for our life ; it is a great entail. 
It belongs as much to them who are to come after us, and 
whose names are already written in the book of creation, as 
to us ; and we have no right by anything that we do or 
neglect to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive 
them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. . . 

. of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent 
forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the 
grave. 



128 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true 
magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. 

The directest manifestation of Deity to man is in His own 
image, that is, in man. ... It cannot be supposed that 
the bodily shape of man resembles any bodily shape in Deity. 
The likeness must therefore be, or have been in the soul. 
Had it wholly passed away, and the Divine Soul been altered 
into a soul brutal or diabolic, I suppose we should have been 
told of the change. But we are told nothing of the kind. 
The verse still stands as if for our use and trust. It was 
only death which was to be our punishment. Not change. 
So far as we live, the image is still there ; defiled, if you 
will ; broken, if you will ; all but effaced if you will, by death 
and the shadow of it. But not changed. We are not made 
now in any other image than God's. There are, indeed, the 
two states of this image, — the earthly and heavenly, but 
both Adamite, both human, both the same likeness; only 
one defiled, and one pure. So that the soul of man is still a 
mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, the image of the mind 
of God. 

"We know no higher or more energetic life than our own ; 
but there seems to me this great good in the idea of grada- 
tion of life — it admits the idea of a life above us, in other 
creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than 
that of the dust. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 129 

The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the 
strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the 
anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place or rank, but in 
gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing the ends, 
of the life which we have chosen, or which circumstances 
have determined for us. 

You may sum the duty of your life in the giving of praise 
worthily, and being yourself worthy of it. Therefore in the 
reading of all history your first purpose must be, to seek what 
is to be praised, and disdain the rest ; and in doing so, remem- 
ber always that the most important part of the history of a 
man is that of his imagination. What he actually does is 
always in great part accidental; it is at best a partial ful- 
filment of his purpose, and what we call history is often, as 
I have said, merely a record of the external accidents which 
befall men getting together in large crowds. The real his- 
tory of mankind is that of the slow advance of resolved deed 
following laboriously just thought : and all the greatest men 
live in their purpose and effort more than is possible for them 
to live in reality. If you would praise them worthily, it is 
for what they conceived and felt ; not merely for what they 
have done. 

Intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life ; 
it stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There 



130 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

is no making ourselves feel enough astonished at it. That 
the occupations, or pastimes of life should have no motive 
is understandable, — but — that life itself should have no mo- 
tive — that we neither care to find out what it may lead to, 
nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us, 
here is a mystery indeed. 

# 

Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " — to 
be this, is indeed to be great in life ; to become this increas- 
ingly, is indeed, to "advance in life," — in life itself — not 
in the trappings of it. 

He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, 
whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is 
entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life 
in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and 
they only. 

* # 
The two essential instincts of humanity — the love of Order 
and the Love of kindness. By the love of order the moral 
energy is to deal with the earth, and to dress it, and to keep 
it ; and with all rebellious and dissolute forces in lower creat- 
ures, or in ourselves. By the love of doing kindness it is to 
deal rightly with all surrounding life. And then, grafted on 
these, we are to make every other passion perfect ; so that 
they may every one have full strength and yet be absolutely 
under control. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 131 

# 

Here is a short piece of precious word revelation, for in- 
stance, " God is Love." 

Love! Yes. But what is that? Out of your own heart 
you may know what love is. In no other possible way, — by 
no other help or sign. All the words and sounds ever uttered, 
all the revelations of cloud, or flame, or crystal, are utterly 
powerless. They cannot tell you in the smallest point what 
love means. 

# * 

Two great and principle passions are evidently appointed 
by the Deity to rule the life of man — namely, the love of 
God, and the fear of its companion death. 

How many motives we have for Love — how much there 

is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our 

gratitude . . . kindness is indeed everywhere and always 

visible. 

* 

Love will do its own proper work ; and the only true test 
of good or bad is ultimately strength of affection .... 
love's misrepresentation being truer than the most mathemat- 
ical presentation. 

# 

In the exact proportion in which men are educated to love, 
to think, and to endure, they become noble, live happily, die 
calmly ; are remembered with perpetual honor by their race, 
and for the perpetual good of it. 



132 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 






" This do, and thou shalt live," nay, in stricter and more 
piercing sense, this be, and thou shalt love : to show mercy 
is nothing — thy soul must be full of mercy ; to be pure in act 
is nothing, thou shalt be pure in heart also. 

There is no pure passion that can be understood or painted, 
except by pureness of heart ; the foul or blunt feeling will see 
itself in everything. ... it will see Beelzebub in the casting 
out of devils, it will find its god of flies in every alabaster box 
of precious ointment. . . . But the right Christian mind will 
in like manner find its own image wherever it exists, it will 
seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, 
and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, and 
always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity ; and so it 
will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the 
human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and 
black, and broken mountain rocks, following their forms 
truly, and yet catching light to make them fair, and that must 
be a steep or unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. 

The great reasoners are self-command, and trust unagitated, 
and deep-looking Love and Faith, which as she is above Rea- 
son, so she best holds the reins of it from her high seat ; so 
that they err grossly who think of the right development even 
of the intellectual type as possible, unless we look to higher 
sources of beauty first. 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 133 



# 

* * 

Only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are made in 
measure like unto Him, can we increase our possession of 
charity, of which the entire essence is in God only. 

# 

He who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the 
grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces 
in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his 
uses ; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those 
that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand, none 
can love God and his human brother without loving all things 
which his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every 
one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier 
than he, if in the under concords they have to fill, their part 
is touched more truly. Wherefore it is good to read of that 
kindness and humbleness of St. Francis of Assisi, who spoke 
never to bird, nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, 
but as his brother ; and so we find are moved the minds of all 
good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the 
Mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught 
in the Heartleap Well. 

" Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 

And again in the White Doe of Rylstone with the added 
teaching of that gift, which we have from things beneath us, 



134 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

in thanks for the love they cannot equally return ; that an- 
guish of our own, 

" Is tempered and allayed by sympathies, 
Aloft ascending and descending deep, 
Even to the inferior kinds," 

so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole 
theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and 
human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man 
makes of himself cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon and alligator 
in one, and gathers into one continuance of cruelty for his 
amusement all the devices that brutes sparingly and at inter- 
vals use against each other for their necessities. 

* 

I would fain hold, if I might, " the faith that every flower 
enjoys the air it breathes," neither do I ever crush or gather 
one without some pain, yet our feeling for them has more of 
sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in de- 
light far more than we can give; for love, I think, chiefly 
grows in giving ; at least, its essence is the desire of doing 
good, or giving happiness. 

# * 
Color — the type of Love — Followed rashly, coarsely, un- 
truly, for the mere pleasure of it, with no reverence, it becomes 
a temptation, and leads to corruption. Followed faithfully, 
with intense but reverent passion, it is the holiest of all as- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 135 

pects of material things. . . . Love when true, faithful, 
well-fixed, is eminently the sanctifying element of human life ; 
without it, the soul cannot reach its fullest height of holiness. 
But if shallow, faithless, misdirected, it is also one of the 
strongest corrupting and degrading elements of life. 

* # 

All things may be elevated by affection, as the spikenard of 
Mary, and in the Song of Solomon, the myrrh upon the han- 
dles of the lock, and that of Isaac concerning his son. . . . 
And I can find something divine in the sweetness of wild 
fruits, as well as in the pleasantness of the pure air, and the 
tenderness of its natural perfumes as they come and go. 

# 

# # 

The Christian theoria seeks not, though it accepts, and 
touches with its own purity what the Epicurean sought, but 
finds its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what 
is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind. Nay, even in 
all that seems coarse and commonplace ; seizing that which 
is good, and delighting more sometimes at finding its table 
spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, 
and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were har- 
monized into a less wondrous pleasure ; hating only what is 
self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is 
not of God's unless reminding it of God, yet able to find evi- 
dence of Him still, where all seems forgetful of Him, and 
to turn that into a witness of His working which was meant 
to obscure it, and so with clear sight beholding Him forever, 



136 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

according to the written promise, "Blessed are the pure in 
heart for they shall see God." 

* * 
In the early ages of Christianity there was little care taken 
to analyze character. One momentous question was heard 
over the whole world, " Dost thou believe in the Lord with 
all thine heart?" . . . The love of Christ was all and in 
all. . . . The early Christians felt that virtue, like sin, was 
a subtle universal thing entering into every act and thought, 
appearing outwardly in ten thousand diverse ways, diverse ac- 
cording to the separate framework of every heart in which 
it dwelt; but one and the same always in proceeding from 
the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding 
from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical 
piety, they saw there was no need for codes of morality or 
systems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended every- 
thing, it was too vast and too spiritual to be defined; but 
there was no need for its definition. For through faith, 
working by love, they knew that all human excellence would 
be developed in due order, but that, without faith, neither 
reason could define, or effort reach the lowest place of Chris- 
tian virtue. 

If loving well the creatures that are like yourself, you feel 
that you would love still more dearly, creatures better than 
yourself — were they revealed to you; if striving with all 
your might to mend what is evil and near you and around, 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 137 

you -would fain look for a day when some Judge of all the 
earth shall surely do right, and the little hills rejoice on every 
side ; if parting with the companions that have given you all 
the best joy you had on earth, you desire ever to meet their 
eyes again, and clasp their hands, — where eyes shall no more 
be dim nor hands fail; — if preparing yourself to lie down 
beneath the grass in silence and loneliness, seeing no more 
beauty, and feeling no more gladness, you would care for 
the promise to you of a time when you shall see God's Light 
again, and know the things you have longed to know, and 
walk in the peace of everlasting Love, — then, the Hope of 
these things to you is religion, the substance of them in your 
life is faith, and in the power of them, it is promised us, that 
the kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of 
our Lord and of His Christ. 

# * 
The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most 
terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest religion, 
which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and 
helpful action. Helpful action, observe ! for there is just one 
law, which obeyed, keeps all religions pure — forgotten, 
makes them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark 
or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in 
which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the 
devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanks- 
giving — "Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men 
are." At every moment of our lives we should be trying to 



138 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what 
we agree with them ; and the moment we find we can agree 
as to anything that should be done kind or good, (and who 
but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together; you can't 
quarrel in a side-by-side push ; but the moment that even the 
best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake 
their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. 

" Taking up one's cross." — It means simply that you are to 
go the road which you see to be the straight one ; carrying 
whatever you find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly 
as you can ; without making faces, or calling people to come 
and look at you. Above all, you are neither to load, or un- 
load, yourself; nor to cut your cross to your own liking. 
Some people think it would be better for them to have it 
large ; and many, that tbey would carry it much faster if it 
were small ; and even those who like it largest are usually 
very particular about its being ornamental, and made of the 
best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep 
your back as straight as you can; and not to think about 
what is upon it — above all, not to boast of what is upon it. 
The real and essential meaning of "virtue " is in that straight- 
ness of back. 

Those who in modest usefulness, have accepted what 
seemed to them here the lowest place in the kingdom of their 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 139 

Father, are not I believe the least likely to receive hereafter 
the command, then, unmistakable, 

11 Friend go up higher." 

* 
* * 

What are the distinctive characters of the Invisible Church ; 
that is to say, What is it makes a person a member of this 
Church, and how is he to be known for such? — .... 

A man becomes a member of this Church only by believing 
in Christ with all his heart ; . . . . there are certain 
signs by which Christ's sheep may be guessed at. Not by their 
being in any definite Fold — for many are lost sheep at times ; 
but by their sheep-like behavior ; and a great many are indeed 
sheep which, on the far mountain side, in their peacefulness, 
we take for stones. To themselves, the best proof of their 
being Christ's sheep, is to find themselves on Christ's shoul- 
ders ; and between them, there are certain sympathies by which 
they may in a sort recognize each other, and so become verily 
visible to each other for mutual comfort. 

We spend much time in arguing about efficacy of sacraments 
and such other mysteries ; but we do not act upon the very 
certain tests which are clear and visible. We know that 
Christ's people are not thieves — not liars — not busy-bodies 
— not dishonest — not avaricious — not wasteful — not cruel. 
Let us then get ourselves well clear of thieves, liars, wasteful 
people, avaricious people — cheating people — people who do 
not pay their debts. Let us assure them that they, at least, 



140 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

do not belong to the Visible Church ; and having thus got that 
Church into decent shape and cohesion, it will be time to think 
of drawing the stake-nets closer. 

I do not say it is possible for men to agree with each other 
in their religious opinions, but it is certainly possible for 
them to agree with each other upon their religious expres- 
sions. 

There is not a moment of a man's active life in which he 

may not be indirectly preaching, and teaching both strangers 

and friends ; his children, his servants, and all who are in any 

way put under him, being given to him as especial objects of 

his ministration. 

* 

The unity of Knowledge and Love, both devoted altogether to 
the service of Christ and His Church, marks the true Christian 
Minister; who I believe, wherever he has existed, has never 
failed to receive due and fitting reverence from all men, — of 
whatever character or opinion ; and I believe that if all those 
who profess to be such, were such indeed, there would never be 
question of their authority more. But, whatever influence 
they may have over the Church, their authority never super- 
sedes that of either the intellect or the conscience of the sim- 
plest of its lay members. They can assist those members in 
the search for truth, or comfort their over-worn and doubtful 
minds ; they can even assure them that they are in the way of 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. HI 

truth, or that pardon is within their reach; but they can 
neither manifest the truth, nor grant the pardon. Truth is 
to be discovered, and Pardon to be won for every man by him- 
self. This is evident from innumerable texts of Scripture, but 
chiefly from those which exhort every man to seek after 
Truth, and which connect knowing with doing. We are to 
seek after knowledge as silver, and search for her as for hid 
treasures; therefore, from every man she must be naturally 
hid, and the discovery of her is to be the reward only of per- 
sonal search. The kingdom of God is as treasure hid in a 
field ; and of those who profess to help us to seek for it, we 
are not to put confidence in those who say, — " Here is the 
treasure we have found it, and have it, and will give you some 
of it;" but in those who say, — "we think this is a good 
place to dig, and you will dig most easily in such and such a 
way." 

Farther it has been promised that if such earnest search be 
made, Truth shall be discovered; as much truth, that is, as is 
necessary for the person seeking. These, therefore, I hold for 
two fundamental principles of religion, — that, without seek- 
ing, truth cannot be known at all ; and that, by seeking, it may 
be discovered by the simplest. I say, without seeking it cannot 
be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor 
set down in Articles, nor in any wise " prepared and sold " in 
packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every 
man by himself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, 
indeed, but not without stern labor of his own. ... In 



1 42 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

what science is knowledge to be had cheap? .... and 
do you expect to penetrate the secret of all secrets, and to 
know that whose price is above rubies; and of which the 
depth saith, — " It is not in me," in so easy fashion? There 
are doubts in this matter which evil spirits darken with their 
wings, and that is true of all such doubts which we were told 
long ago — they can " be ended by action alone." 

As surely as we live, this truth of truths can only so be dis- 
cerned ; to those who act on what they know, more shall be 
revealed; and thus, if any man will do His will, he shall know 
the doctrine whether it be of God. Any man ; — not the man 
who has most means of knowing, who has the subtlest brains, 
or sits under the most orthodox preacher, or has his library 
fullest of most orthodox books — but the man who strives to 
know, who takes God at His word, and sets himself to dig up 
the heavenly mystery, roots and all, before sunset, and the 
night comes in which no man can work. Beside such a man, 
God stands in more and more visible presence, and teaches 
him that which no preacher can teach. 

There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a 
human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon 
it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it 
with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight 
whether of ear or intellect, we shall necessarily be led to ex- 
pect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to 
think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a golden fringe 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 143 

round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the ser- 
mon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed 
upon the cushion in a majestic manner before beginning ; all 
this we shall duly come to expect ; but we shall at the same 
time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which 
it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour 
or three quarters, but which, when this duty has been de- 
corously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy 
confidence of being provided with another when next it shall 
be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, 
whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which 
it is a matter of life or death. whether we hear or refuse ; if 
we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in clan- 
ger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in 
the seven days to speak to them ; if we make some endeavor 
to conceive how precious those hours ought to be to him, a 
small vantage on the side of God, after his flock has been 
exposed for six clays together to the full weight of the world's 
temptations, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and 
the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat 
has been scattered there snatched from the way-side by this 
wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary 
with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect 
and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the 
separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all 
their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn 
them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir 



1U THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master Himself 
has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the 
openings of those dark streets where wisdom herself hath 
stretched forth her hands and no man regarded, — thirty 
minutes to raise the dead in, — let us but once understand 
and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that 
frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the 
message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes 
upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if, ineffectual, re- 
mains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer 
and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We 
shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat 
of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of 
the messenger; we shall wish that his words may be very 
simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which 
he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the 
people have gathered in their thirst. 

We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our 
thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. 
His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot 
be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small 
but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, 
or insult Him by taking it into our own hands ; and what is 
true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use 
it most reverently when most habitually ; our insolence is in 
ever acting without reference to it ; our true honoring of it 
is in its universal application. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 145 






If a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs and asks 
its father for it — does it call that doing its father a service? 
If it begs for a toy or a piece of cake, does it call that serv- 
ing its father? That with God is prayer, and He likes to 
hear it ; He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want it ; 
but He doesn't call that "serving Him." Begging is not 
serving ; God likes mere beggars as little as you do. He likes 
honest servants, not beggars. So when a child loves its 
father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs 
about him, but it doesn't call that serving its father ; neither 
is singing songs about God serving Him. 

* # 
If we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very 
wrong, and say he " takes God's name in vain." But there's 
a twenty times worse way of taking His Name in vain, than 
that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He doesn't 
like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing don't ask 
for it. . . . If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't 
pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for 
it ; you must work for it. And to work for it you must know 
what it is ; we have all prayed for it many a day without 
thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come to us ; 
we are not to go to it. Also it is not to be a kingdom of the 
dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at once, 
but quietly ; nobody knows how. ' ' The kingdom of God 
cometh not with observation." Also it is not to come out- 



146 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

side of us, but in the hearts of us ; " the kingdom of God is 
within you." And, being within us, it is not a thing to be 
seen, but to be felt ; and though it brings all substance of 
good with it, it does not consist in that; "the kingdom of 
God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost; " joy that is to say, in the holy, health- 
ful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if you wart to work for this 
kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one 
condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, 
or not at all. " Whosoever will not receive it as a little child 
shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little children 
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
dom of Heaven." 

You have the child's character in these four things — Hu- 
mility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. 

The best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may 
not lose its moments. 

Take for example of the Religion of our ancestors, a 
prayer, personally and passionately offered to the Deity . . . 
the prayer Alfred's : — 

" O Thou who are the Father of that Son which has awak- 
ened us, and yet urgeth us out of the sleep of our sins, and 
exhorteth us that we become Thine ; to Thee, Lord, I pray, 
who art the Supreme truth ; for all the truth that is, is truth 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 147 

from Thee. Thee I implore, O Lord, who art the highest 
wisdom. Through Thee are wise all those that are so. Thou 
art the true life, and through Thee are living all those that 
are so. Thou art the supreme felicity, and from Thee all 
have become happy that are so. Thou art the highest good, 
and from Thee all beauty springs. Thou art the intellectual 
light, and from Thee man derives his understanding. 

"To Thee, O God, I call and speak. Hear, O hear me, 
Lord ! for Thou art my God and my Lord ; my Father and 
my Creator; my ruler and my hope; my wealth and my 
honor; my house, my country, my salvation, and my life! 
Hear, hear me, O Lord! Few of Thy servants comprehend 
Thee. But Thee alone I love, indeed above all other things. 
Thee I seek : Thee I will follow : Thee I am ready to serve. 
Under Thy power I desire to abide, for Thou alone art the 
Sovereign of all. I pray Thee to command me as Thou wilt." 

You see this prayer is simply the expansion of that clause 
of the Lord's Prayer which most men eagerly omit from it, — 
Fiat voluntas tua. In being so, it sums the Christian prayer 
of all ages. ... If you are minded to begin each clay 
with Alfred's prayer, — fiat voluntas tua; resolving that you 
will stand to it, and that nothing that happens in the course 
of the day shall displease you. Then set to any work you 
have in hand with the sifted and purified resolution that am- 
bition shall not mix with it, nor love of gain, nor desire of 
pleasure more than is appointed for yo.u ; and that no anxiety 
shall touch you as to its issue, nor any impatience nor regret 



1 48 THO UGHT8 OF BE A UTY. 

if it fail. Imagine that the thing is being done through 
you, not by you : that the good of it may never be known, 
but that at least, unless by your rebellion or foolishness, there 
can come no evil into it, nor wrong chance to it. Resolve 
also with steady industry to do what you can for the help of 
your country and its honor, and the honor of its God ; . . . 
and that in all you do and feel you will look frankly for the 
immediate help and direction, and to your own consciences, 
expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe, and 
with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of 
the trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all 
joy and peace in believing. 

As there is only one kind of water which quenches all 
thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all 
hunger, the bread of justice or righteousness ; which hunger- 
ing after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of 
Heaven. 

Remember, .... that the happiness of your life, and 
its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend 
on the way you pass your clays now. They are not to be sad 
days ; far from that, the first duty of young people is to be 
delighted and delightful ; but they are to be in the deepest 
sense solemn clays. There is no solemnity so deep, to a 
rightly thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not only in 
that beautiful sense, but in all their character and method, 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 149 

they are to be solemn clays. Take your Latin dictionary, and 
look out "sollennis," and fix the sense of the word well in 
your mind, and remember that every day of your early life is 
ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and prac- 
tise of your soul ; ordaining either sacred customs of dear and 
lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and deeper the furrows 
for seed of sorrow. 

See that no clay passes in which you do not make yourself a 
somewhat better creature ; and in order to do that, find out, 
first, what you are now. 

# * 
Try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly 
in the face, in mind as well as body. I do not doubt but that 
the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and 
for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so always have 
two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that with proper 
care you dress body and mind before them daily. After the 
dressing is once over for the day, think no more about it ; as 
your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper and 
thoughts will get ruffled with the clay's work, and may need, 
sometimes, twice dressing; but I don't want you to carry 
about a mental pocket-comb ; only to be smooth braided al- 
ways in the morning. 

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and 
the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest 



150 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

and delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from the be- 
ginning, consider all your accomplishments as means of assist- 
ance to others. 

# 

Ascertain clearly what is wrong with you ; and so far as 
you know any means of mending it, take those means, and 
have done; when you are examining yourself, never call 
yourself merely a " sinner;" that is very cheap abuse, and ut- 
terly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. 
But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an 
evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in 
any wise any of these. Take steady means to check yourself 
in whatever fault you have ascertained, and justly accused 
yourself of, and as soon as you are in active way of mending, 
you will be no more inclined to moan over an undefined cor- 
ruption. For the rest, you will find it less easy to uproot 
faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. 

Do not think of your faults; still less of others' faults; in 
every person who comes near you, look for what is good and 
strong; honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imi- 
tate it; and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when 
their time comes. 

Perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood 
that the beauty of Holiness must be in labor as well as in rest, 
Nay ! more, if it may be, in labor ; in our strength, rather than 



THO UGHTS OF BE A TJTY. 151 

in our weakness ; and in the choice of what we shall work for 
through the six days, and may know to be good at their even- 
ing time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the sev- 
enth, of reward or repose. With the multitude that keep 
holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to 
the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked, for what we 
fancied would be mercy ; but for the few who labor as their 
Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their 
wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall 
follow them, all the days of their life ; and they shall dwell in 

the house of the Lord — For Ever. 

# 

# # 

" The Grace of our Lord Christ, and the Love of God, and 
the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you ". . . . The 
three things do actually exist, and can be known if you care 
to know them, and possessed if you care to possess them : 
First, by simply obeying the orders of the Founder of your 
religion, all grace, graciousness, or beauty and favor of gen- 
tle life, will be given to you in mind and body, in work and in 
rest. The Grace of Christ exists, and can be had if you will. 
Secondly as you know more and more of the created world, 
you will find that the true will of its Maker is that its crea- 
tures should be happy; — that He has made everything beau- 
tiful in its time, and in its place, and that it is chiefly hy the 
fault of men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting 
His laws, that Creation groans or travails in pain. The Love 
of God exists, and you may see it, and live in it if you will. 



152 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Lastly a Spirit does actually exist which teaches the ant her 
path, the bird her building, and men in an instructive and 
marvellous way, whatever lovely arts and noble deeds are pos- 
sible to them. Without it you can do no good thing. To the 
grief of it you can do many bad ones. In the possession of 
it is your peace and your power. 

Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of 
life ; and every setting sun be to you as its close, — then let 
every one of these short lives leave its sure record of some 
kindly thing done for others, some goodly strength or knowl- 
edge gained for yourself. 

Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of that 
blessing given to the peace-makers? People are always ex- 
pecting to get peace in Heaven: but you know whatever 
peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making 
of peace they can be blest for must be on the earth here : not 
the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst 
its " sea of troubles." — Difficult enough you think? Perhaps 
so, but I do not see that any of us try. We complain of the 
want of many things — we want votes, we want liberty, we 
want amusement, we want money, which of us feels or knows 
that he wants peace? There are two ways of getting it, if you 
do want it. The first is wholly in your own power : to make 
yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts, . . . what fairy 
palaces we may build of beautiful thoughts! proof against 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 153 

all adversity. Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble his- 
tories, faithful sayings, treasure-houses of precious and rest- 
ful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make 
gloomy, nor poverty take away from us — homes built with- 
out hands for our souls to live in. 

That your neighbor should, or should not, remain content 
with his position is not your business : but it is very much 
your business to remain content with your own. . . . We 
need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide 
whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves 
that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — 
not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure ; not higher fortune, 
but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self- 
possession; and honoring themselves in the harmless pride 
and calm pursuits of peace. 

No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge or agree- 
ment ; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which 
we shall win by victory over shame or sin ; — victory over the 
sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For 
many a year to come, the sword of every righteous nation 
must be whetted to save or to subdue ; nor will it be by patience 
of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that 
you will ever draw nearer to the time when the great change 
shall pass upon the iron of the earth — when men shall beat 
their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into prim- 
ing-hooks ; neither shall they learn war any more. 



154 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Of lowly peace it is written that ' ' justice and peace have 
kissed each other; " and that the fruit of peace is " sown in 
peace of them that make peace ; " not " peacemakers " in the 
common understanding — reconcilers of quarrels, but peace- 
Creators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give unless 
you first gain ! 

You may assuredly find perfect peace, if you are resolved 
to do that which your Lord has plainly required — and con- 
tent that He should indeed require no more of you, than to 
do Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. 

The world would be a place of peace, if we were all peace- 
makers. 

# # 

"Work while you have light," especially while you have 
the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful 
to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious 
their youth is. 

# * 

If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of 
thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have 
agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is 
that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other ; 
— that His first order is — " Work while you have light ; " 
and His second, " Be merciful while you have mercy." 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 155 

# * 

God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where 
He wishes us to be employed ; and that employment is truly 
" our Father's business." He chooses work for every creature 
which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and 
humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense 
enough, for what He wants us to do ; if we either tire our- 
selves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may 
always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. 

"Work is only done well when it is done with a will ; and 
no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is 
doing what he should, and is in his place. 

* 

# * 

People are perpetually squabbling about what will be best 
to do ; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, ever ask 
what it is just to do. And it is the law of Heaven that you 
shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are 
first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the 
one thing constantly reiterated by our Master — the order of 
all others that is given oftenest — "Do justice and judg- 
ment." That's your Bible order; that is the "Service of 
God " not praying or psalm-singing. 

God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mis- 
sion, and if they discharge it honorably, if they quit them- 



156 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

selves like men, and faithfully follow that light which is in 
them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influences, 
there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed 
mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service 
constant and holy. — Degrees infinite of lustre there must al- 
ways be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seem- 
ingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily 
used, will be a gift also to his race for ever. 

There is no action so slight nor so mean, but it may be done 
to a great purpose, and ennobled thereby, nor is any purpose 
so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be done 
so as to help it much, most especially that chief of all pur- 
poses, the pleasing God. 

Wise work, is cheerful, as a child's work is. 

Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so 
long as your right hands have motion in them ; and to do it, 
whether the issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the 
name will ever be possible to you, while, in once forming the 
resolution that your work is to be well done, life is really won, 
here and for ever. 

However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something 
in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest 
forms of manly virtue; and the truth, decision, and temper- 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 157 

ance which we reverently regard as honorable conditions of 
the spiritual being, have a representative or desirable influ- 
ence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, 
and the action of the intellect. 

Ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of 
human industry, that industry worthily followed, gives peace. 
Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine ; ask 
the patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, 
fiery-hearted worker in bronze and in marble, and with the 
colors of light ; and none of these who are true workmen, 
will ever tell you, that they have found the law of heaven an 
unkind one — that in the sweat of their face they should eat 
bread, till they return to the ground ; nor that they ever found 
it an unrewarded obedience, if indeed it were rendered faith- 
fully to the command — ' ' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do 
— do it with thy might." 

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort; 
a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it 
without effort. I have said no great intellectual thing; for I 
do not mean the assertion to extend to things moral. On the 
contrary, it seems to me that just because we are intended, as 
long as we live, to be in a state of intense moral effort, we are 
not intended to be in intense physical or intellectual effort. 
Our full energies are to be given to the soul's work — to the 
great fight with the Dragon — the taking the kingdom of hea- 



158 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ven by force. But the body's work, and head's work are to be 
done quietly and comparatively without effort. 

Neither limbs nor brain are ever to be strained to their ut- 
most ; that is not the way in which the greatest quantity of 
work is to be got out of them ; they are never to be worked 
furiously, but with tranquility and constancy. We are to fol- 
low the plough from sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race- 
boats at the twilight ; we shall get no fruit of that kind of 

work, only disease of the heart. 

# 

# # 

There is a working class — strong and happy — among both 
rich and poor; there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and 
miserable — among both rich and poor. 

By far the greater part of the suffering and crime which ex- 
ist arises simply from people not understanding this truism 
— not knowing that produce or wealth is eternally connected 
by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labor; but 
hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law 
of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and be 
warm when they have not woven. 

One lesson we are invariably taught, that the work of the 
great Spirit of Nature is as deep and unapproachable in the 
lowest as in the noblest objects — that the Divine Mind is as 
visible in its full energy of operation in every lowly bank and 
mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven and 



THO UGIITS OF BE A UTY. 159 

setting the foundations of the earth; and that to the rightly 
perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, 
the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection 
manifested in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of 
the cloud, in the moulding of the dust as in the kindling of 
the day-star. 

Every day shows me more and more the importance of the 
Hand. Of the hand as a Servant, observe — not of the hand 
as a Master : For there are two kinds of manual work ; one 
in which the hand is continually receiving and obeying orders ; 
the other in which it is acting independently, or even giving 
orders of its own. And the dependent and submissive hand 
is a noble hand, but the independent or imperative hand is a 
vile one. 



* 



All wise work is mainly threefold in character — It is hon- 
est, useful and cheerful. 

# 



* 



I receive many letters from parents respecting the education 
of their children. In the mass of these letters, I am always 
struck by the precedence which the idea of a "position in 
life," takes above all other thoughts in the parents',— more 
especially in the mothers,' — minds. « ' The education befitting 
such and such a station in life " — this is the phrase, this the 
object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, 
an education good in itself; the conception of abstract right- 



160 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ness in training rarely seems reached by the writers. But an 
education " which shall keep a good coat on my son's back; — 
an education which shall enable him to ring with confidence 
the visitor's bell at double-belled doors ; — education which 
shall result ultimately in establishment of a double-belled 
door to his own house; in a word, which shall lead to "ad- 
vancement in life." It never seems to occur to the parents 
that there may be an education which, in itself, is " advance- 
ment in Life ; " — that any other than that may perhaps be ad- 
vancement in Death ; and that this essential education might 
be more easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they set 
about it in the right way ; while it is for no price, and by no 
favor to be got, if they set about it in the wrong way. 

The entire difference between education and non-education 
(as regards the merely intellectual part of it,) consists in 
. . . . accuracy. A well-educated gentleman may not 
know many languages, — may not be able to speak any but 
his own, — may have read very few books. But whatever 
language he knows, he knows precisely : whatever word he 
pronounces he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned 
in the peerage of words ; knows the words of true descent 
and ancient blood at a glance, from words of modern canaille ; 
remembers all their ancestry — their intermarriages, dis- 
tantest relationships, and the extent to which they were ad- 
mitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of 
words at any time, and in any country. But an uneducated 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY, 161 

person may know by memory any number of languages, and 
talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any — not a 
word even of his own. 

This has been the real cause of failure in our efforts after 
education hitherto — whether from above or below. There 
is no honest desire for the thing itself. The cry for it among 
the lower orders is b^pause they think that, when once they 
have got it, they must become upper orders. . . . There 
is a strange notion in the mob's mind nowadays, that every- 
body can be uppermost ; or at least that a state of general 
scramble, in which everybody in his turn should come to 
the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and that, once 
give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to 
ride in his carriage. ... A man had better not know 
how to read or write than receive education on such terms. 
The first condition on which it can be given usefully is, 
that it sljpuld be clearly understood to be no means of getting 
on in the world, but a means of staying pleasantly in your 

place there. 

# 

Education in its deepest sense is not the equalizer, but the 

discerner of men. 

* 
# * 

The entire object of true education is to make people not 
merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not 
merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, 



162 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity, 
— not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice. 
# * 
Keverence and compassion we are to teach primarily, and 
with these, as the bond and guardian of them, Truth of spirit 
and word, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passion- 
ate, sought for like a treasure, and kept like a crown. 

The accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence will 
at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
clusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent 
or mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any 
civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of in- 
ferior standing forever. 

Most men's minds are indeed little better than rough heath 
wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly 
overgrown with pestilent brakes and venomous wind-sown 
herbage of evil surmise ; so that the first thing you have to do 
for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to set fire 
to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash heaps, and 
then plough and sow. All the true literary work before you, 
for life, must begin with obedience to that order. "Break 
up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." 

The final result of the education I want you to give your 
children will be, in a few words, this : They will know what 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 163 

it is to see the sky. They will know what it is to breathe it, 
and they will know best of all, what it is to behave under it, 
as in the presence of a Father who is in Heaven. 

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we 
ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books ; and 
valuable books should, in a civilized country, be within the 
reach of every one, printed in excellent form, for a just 
price ; but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of smallness 
of t3 r pe, physically injurious form, at a vile price. For we 
none of us need many books, and those which we need ought 
to be clearly printed, on the best paper, and strongly bound. 

No person in decent circumstances would put on his table 
bad meat, without being ashamed, so he need not have on his 
shelves ill-printed or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books ; 
for, though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly 
exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his 
family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart 
or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. 
And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of 
due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon 
as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, 
and steadily — however slowly — increasing, series of books 
for use through life ; making his little library, of all the fur- 
niture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece ; 
every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in 



164 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the 
children of the house being how to turn the pages of their 
own literary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no 
chance of tearing or dog's-ears. 

All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those 
beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may by 
good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the 
sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man of science, 
and be answered good-humoreclly. We may intrude ten min- 
utes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once 
or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet; and 
spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of little 
more than these; while, meantime, there is a society con- 
tinually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as 
we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; — talk to us in 
the best words they can choose, and with thanks if we listen 
to them. And this society, because it is so numerous and so 
gentle, — and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not 
to grant audience, but to gain it ; — kings and statesmen lin- 
gering patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow ante- 
rooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that 
company, — perhaps never listen to a word they would say, 
all day long ! 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 1G5 

# 

You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that 
the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, 
who are praying us to listen to them, and the passion with 
which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble, who 
despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in 
this, — that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is 
themselves and not their sayings, with which we desire to be- 
come familiar. But it is not so. Suppose you never were to 
see their faces ; — suppose you could be put behind a screen 
in the statesman's cabinet, or the princes' chamber, would 
you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were for- 
bidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen 
is only a little less, folded in two, instead of four, and you can 
be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a 
book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the 
studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; 
this station of audience, and honorable privy council you de- 
spise ! 

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the 
hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is 
not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that 
does not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction 
of species. There are good books for the hour, and good 
ones for all time ; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for 
all time. I must define the two kinds. 



166 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

The good book of the hour, then — I do not speak of the 
bad ones — is simply, the useful or pleasant talk of some per- 
son whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for 
you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know ; 
very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's pleasant talk would 
be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humored and 
witty discussions of questions ; lively or pathetic story-telling 
in the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents con- 
cerned in the events of passing history ; — all these books of 
the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more 
general, are a peculiar characteristic and possession of the 
present age; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and 
entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of 
them. But we make the worst possible use, if we allow them 
to usurp the place of true books ; for, strictly speaking, they 
are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good 
print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary to- 
day ; whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The 
newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but as- 
suredly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound up in 
a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an ac- 
count of the inns, and roads, and weather last year at such a 
place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the 
real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable 
for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the 
word, a " book " at all, nor, in the real sense, to be " read." 
A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing ; 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1G7 

and written, not with the view of mere communication, but 
of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its 
author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he 
could, he would — the volume is mere multiplication of his 
voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India ; if you could, 
you would; you write instead; that is mere conveyance of 
voice. 

But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not 
to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The author has some- 
thing to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help- 
fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; 
so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to 
say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all 
events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, 
or group of things, manifest to him ; — this the piece of true 
knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth 
has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for- 
ever ; engrave it on rock, if he could ; saying, ' ' This is the 
best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved 
and hated, like another ; my life was as the vapor, and is not ; 
but this I saw and knew ; this, if anything of mine, is worth 
your memory." This is his "writing;" it is, in his small 
human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is 
in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a " Book." 

* * 
Whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevo- 
lently done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is 



16* THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

mixed always with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, af- 
fected work. . , . But if you read rightly, you will easily 

discover the true bits, and those are the book. 

# 

Life is short — you have heard as much before ; — yet have 
you measured and mapped out this short life and its possi- 
bilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read 
that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? 
Will you go and gossip with your house-maid, or your stable- 
boy, when you may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter 
yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your 
own claims to respect that you jostle with the common crowd 
for entree here, and audience there, when all the while this 
eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the 
world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, 
of everyplace and time? Into that you may enter always: 
in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your 
wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be out- 
cast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of com- 
panionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be as- 
suredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take 
high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all 
the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you 
desire to take in this company of the Dead. 

"The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, 
I must also say: because, observe, this court of the past 
differs from all living aristocracy in this: — it is open to 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 169 

labors and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of 
those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar per- 
son ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg 
St. Germain, there is but brief question, " Do you deserve to 
enter?" " Pass." " Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? 
Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for 
the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and 
you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. If you will 
not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may 
assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought 
to you with considerable pain; but here we neither feign 
nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if 
you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if 
you would recognize our presence." . . . You must, in a 
word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No 
ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You 
must love them, and show your love. . . . First, by a 
true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their 
thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your 
own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book 
is not wiser than you, you need not read it ; if he be, he will 
think differently from you in many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good that is — 
that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, " How 
strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and yet I 
see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." 



170 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

Be sure that you. go to the author to get at his meaning, 
not to find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think your- 
self qualified to do so ; but ascertain it first. And be sure 
also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get 
at his meaning all at once ; — nay, that at his whole meaning 
you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that 
he does not say what he means, and in strong words too ; 
but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, 
but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may 
be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, 
nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward, and will 
make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow 
you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical type of 
wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why 
the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever 
there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so 
that kings and people might know that all the gold they 
could get was there ; and without any trouble of digging, or 
anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as 
much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. 
She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where ; 
you may dig long and find none ; you must dig painfully to 
find any. 

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 171 

you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, " Am I in- 
clined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pick- 
axes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim my- 
self, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, 
and my temper? " And, keeping the figure a little longer, 
even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly use- 
ful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's 
mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have 
to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes 
are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting-furnace 
is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any 
good author's meaning without those tools and that fire; 
' often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patient- 
est fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal. 
And therefore I tell you earnestly, you must get into the 
habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself 
of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay, letter by letter. 
For though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters 
in the function of signs, to sounds in function of signs, that 
the study of books is called "literature," and that a man 
versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of let- 
ters, instead of a man of books, or of words, you may yet 
connect with that accidental nomenclature this real principle : 
— that you might read all the books in the British Museum 
(if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly " illiter- 
ate " uneducated person ; but that if you read ten pages of 
a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real ac- 



172 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

curacy, — you are for evermore in some measure an educated 

person. 

* 

If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad 
— a biblio-maniac. But you never call any one a horse- 
maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their 
horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves 
by their books. 

* # 
"We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body ; now 
a good bock contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is a provis- 
ion for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most 
people would look at the best book before they would give the 
price of a large turbot for it ! 

If public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or 
books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish 
men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in 
reading, as well as in munching and sparkling. 

No book is worth anything which is not worth much ; nor is 
it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, 
and loved again ; and marked, so that you can refer to the 
passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he 
needs in an armory, or a house-wife bring the spice she needs 
from her store. 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 73 

Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, sweet as honey, 
if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be 
poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
pliable barley-loaves pay their baker's bill. 

* 

# * 

Books ! — the value of them consists first, in their power of 
preserving and communicating the knowledge of facts — sec- 
ondly in their power of exciting vital or noble emotions and 

intellectual action. 

# 

The way in which common people read their Bibles is just 
like the way that the old monks thought hedge-hogs ate 
grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over, 
where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to 
their spines, they carried off, and ate. 

So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over 
their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own 
spines is Scripture, and that nothing else is. But you can 
only get the skins of the texts that way. If you want their 
juice, you must press them in cluster. 

# # 

What would have been the course, or issue, of Christianity, 
had it been orally preached only, and unsupported by its poet- 
ical literature, might be the subject of deeply instructive 
speculation — if a historian's duty were to reflect instead of 
record. The power of the Christian faith was, however, in 



1 74 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

the fact of it, always founded on the written prophecies and 
histories of the Bible ; and on the interpretations of their 
meaning given by the example, far more than by the precept 

of the great monastic orders. 

* 

* # 

It is a creed with a great part of the English people, that 
they are in possession of a book which tells them, straight 
from the lips of God all they ought to do, and need to know. 
I have read that book with as much care as most of them , for 
some forty years ; and am thankful that, on those who trust it, 
I can press its pleadings. My endeavor has been uniformly to 
make them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust it not in 
their own favorite verses only, but in the sum of all ; trust it 
not as a fetich, or talisman, which they are to be saved by 
daily repetitions of, but as a Captain's order to be heard and 
obeyed at their peril. 

This book, which has been the accepted guide of the moral 
intelligence of Europe for some one thousand and five hun- 
dred years, enforces certain simple laws of human conduct 
which you know have also been agreed upon in every main 
point by all the religious and by all the greatest profane writ- 
ers, of every age and country. This book primarily forbids 
pride, lasciviousness, and covetousness ; and you know, that 
all great thinkers, in every nation of mankind, have similarly 
forbade these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth, temper- 
ance, charity, and equity; and you know that every great 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 1 75 

Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins them also. You know 
besides, that through all the mysteries of human fate and his- 
tory, this one great law of fate is written on the walls of cit- 
ies, or in their dust, — written in letters of light and letters 
of blood, — that where truth, temperance, and equity have 
been preserved, all strength, and peace, and joy have been 
preserved also ; — that where lying, lasciviousness, and covet- 
ousness have been practised, there has followed an infallible, 
and for centuries irrecoverable, ruin. And you know, lastly, 
that the observance of this common law of righteousness, 
commending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruit- 
ful in their temporal good, is by the religious writers of every 
nation, and chiefly in this venerated Scripture of ours, con- 
nected with some distinct hope of better life, and righteous- 
ness, to come. 

Again and again you will indeed find the stream of the Gos- 
pel contracting itself into narrow channels, and appearing, 
after long concealed Alteration through veins of unmeasured 
rock, with the bright resilience of a mountain spring. 

Perhaps to my younger readers, one word may be per- 
mitted respecting their Bible-reading in general. The Bible 
is indeed, a deep book, when depth is required, that is to say 
for deep people. But it is not intended, particularly, for pro- 
found persons. And therefore the first, and generally the 
main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, written 



176 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, needing no 
penetration, nor amplification ; needing nothing, but what we 
all might give — attention. 

But this, which is in every one's power, and is the only 
thing that God wants, is just the last thing any one will give 
Him. We are delighted to ramble awa}^ into day-dreams, to 
repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance 
words ; to snap at an expression which suits our own partic- 
ular views, or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, which 
we should be amiably grieved to think any human being had 
been so happy as to find before. But the plain, intended, im- 
mediate, fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find 
always, and especially that which depends on our seeing the 
force of the whole passage, in due relation — this sort of sig- 
nificance we do not look for : — it being, truly, not to be dis- 
covered, unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to 
our own feelings. . . . The first thing that children 
should be taught about their Bibles is, to distinguish clearly 
between words that they understand and words that they do 
not ; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and 
verses connected with them, to be asked about, or for a fu- 
ture time; and never to think they are reading the Bible 
when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknown 
tongue. 

The greater number of the words which are recorded in 
Scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the Deity, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 177 

are either simple revelations of His law, or special threaten- 
ings, commands, and promises relating to special events. 
But two passages of God's speaking, one in the Old, and one 
in the New Testament, possess, it seems to me, a different 
character from any of the rest, having been uttered the one 
to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man 
whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other, 
as the first statement to all men of the principles of Chris- 
tianity by Christ Himself — I mean the 38th to the 41st chap- 
ters of the book of Job, and the Sermon on the Mount. Now, 
the first of these, passages is, from beginning to end, nothing 
else than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected 
to humble observance to the works of God in nature. And 
the other consists only in the inculcation of three things : 1st. 
right conduct; 2d, looking for eternal life; 3d, trusting 
God, through watchfulness of His dealing with His creation ; 
and the entire contents of the book of Job, and of the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, will be found resolvable simply into these 
three requirements from all men — that they should act 
rightly, hope for heaven, and watch God's wonders and 
work in the earth ; the right conduct being always summed 
up under the three heads of justice, mercy, and truth, and no 
mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either 
piece of divine teaching. 

The whole language, both of the book of Job and the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, gives precisely the view of nature which 



1 78 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

is taken by the uninvestigating affection of a humble, but 
powerful mincl. There is no dissection of muscles, or count- 
ing of elements, but the boldest and broadest glance at the 
apparent facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in ex- 
pressing them. 

# 

The Bible is specifically distinguished from all other early 
literature, by its delight in natural imagery ; and the dealings 
of God with His people are calculated peculiarly to awaken 
this sensibility within them. Out of the monotonous valley 
of Egypt they are instantly taken into the midst of the might- 
iest mountain scenery in the peninsula of Arabia ; and that 
scenery is associated hi their minds with the immediate mani- 
festation and presence of the Divine Power ; so that mount- 
ains forever afterwards become invested with a peculiar 
sacredness in their minds . . . and their literature is 
full of expressions, not only testifying a vivid sense of the 
power of nature over man, but showing that sympathy with 
natural things themselves, as if they had human souls, which 
is the especial characteristic of true love of the works of 
God. . . . Consider such expressions as that tender and 
glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the mount- 
ains as rejoicing over the fall of the king of Assyria : " Yea, 
the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, say- 
ing, Since thou hast gone down to the grave, no feller has 
come up against us." See what sympathy there is here, as 
with the very hearts of the trees themselves. So also in the 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 179 

words of Christ, in His personification of the lilies, " They 
toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such expressions as, 
" The sea saw that, and fled. Jordan was driven back. The 
mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs." 
Try to find anything in profane writing like this ; and note 
farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been 
chiefly written, and placed in the inspired volume in order to 
show the value of natural history, and its power on the 
human heart. . . . The magnificent allusions to natural 
scenery throughout the book are calculated to touch the 
heart to the end of time. 

At the central point of Jewish prosperity; you have the 
first great naturalist the world ever saw — Solomon — not 
permitted, indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the discoveries of 
modern times, but so gifted as to show us that heavenly wis- 
dom is manifested as much in the knowledge of the hyssop 
that springeth out of the wall as in political and philosophical 
speculation. The books of the Old Testament, as distin- 
guished from all other early writings, are thus prepared for 
an everlasting influence over humanity; and, finally, Christ 
Himself, setting the concluding example to the conduct and 
thoughts of men, spends nearly His whole life in the fields, 
the mountains, or the small country villages of Judea. And 
in the very closing scenes of His life, will not so much as 
sleep within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little 
village of Bethphage, walking in the morning and returning in 



180 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

the evening, through the peaceful avenues of the Mount of 
Olives, to and from His work of teaching in the temple. It 
would thus naturally follow both from the general tone and 
teaching of the Scriptures and from the example of our Lord 
Himself that wherever Christianity was preached and ac- 
cepted, there would be an immediate interest awakened in 
the works of God as seen in the natural world. 

Wheresoever the search after truth begins, there life be- 
gins ; wheresoever that search ends, there life ceases. 

We are all of us willing enough to accept dead truths or 
blunt ones ; which can be fitted harmlessly into spare niches. 
. . . But a sapling truth, with earth at its root and 
blossom on its branches ; or a trenchant truth that can cut 
its way through bars and sods ; most men, it seems to me, 
dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any means such 
guest or vision may be avoided. 

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words ; a lie 
may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a 
syllable, by a glance, or the attaching a peculiar significance 
to a sentence ; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser 
by many degrees than a lie plainly worded ; so that no form 
of blind conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts it- 
self for having deceived, because the deception was by ges- 
ture or silence, instead of utterance; and finally, according 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 181 

to Tennyson's deep and trenchant line, " A lie which is half 
a truth is ever the worst of lies." 

# 

There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some er- 
rors slight in the estimation of wisdom, but truth forgives no 
insult, and endures no stain. 

* # 
It is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of 

mischief in the world But it is the glistening 

and softly spoken lie ; the amiable fallacy ; the patriotic lie of 
the historian ; the provident lie of the politician ; the zealous 
lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; and the 
careless lie of each man to himself, that casts that black mys- 
tery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we 
thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; 
happy in that thirst for truth still remains with us, even 
when we have wilfully left the fountains of it. 

It seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker 
forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those 
which have mingled unregarded and unchastisecl, with the cur- 
rent of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of 
one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as 
unintended. Cast them all aside ; they may be light and ac- 
cidental ; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, 
for all that ; and it is better that our hearts should be swept 
clean of them, without over care as to which is largest or 



1 82 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

blackest. Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only 
by practice ; it is less a matter of will than of habit, and I 
doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice 
and formation of such a habit. . . . And seeing that of 
all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the 
Almighty, no one more "wanting the good of virtue and of 
being " than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence to 
fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and 
surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that, whatever 
semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may 
compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the seren- 
ity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his 
chosen delights. 

As a woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so 
would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The using 
of them is just as downright and inexcusable as a lie. 

You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not ; 
which pretends to have cost, and to be, what it did not, and 
is not; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and 
a sin. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody 
wants integrity. All the fair devices that ever were fancied 
are not worth a lie. 

I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts 
of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful prac- 
tise of handicrafts could far advance the cause of Truth, but 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 183 

because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by 
the spurs of chivalry. . . . We may not be able to com- 
mand good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture, but we 
can command an honest architecture ; the meagreness of pov- 
erty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected ; but 
what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception? 

* # 

Truth. . . . that golden and narrow line, which the 
very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy 
and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, 
which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination cov- 
ers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How 
difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, 
while it has to restrain the hostility of all the worst princi- 
ples of man, has also to restrain the disorders of his best, 
which is continually assaulted by the one and betrayed by the 
other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest 
and the boldest violations of its law. 

Violate truth wilfully, in the slightest particular, or, at 
least, get into the habit of violating it, and all kinds of fail- 
ure and error will surround and haunt you to your fall. 

# 

# # 

Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most bril- 
liant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feel- 
ing, (supposing that feeling could be false and pure at the 
same time :) not the most exalted conception, nor the most 



184 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the 
want of truth, and that for two reasons ; first, because false- 
hood is in itself revolting and degrading ; and secondly, be- 
cause nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the human 
mind can conceive, that every departure from her, is a fall 
beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an orna- 
mental falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as well as a 
sin, an injury as well as a deception. 

# 

It is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything how- 
ever simple. 

# 

The absolute disdain of all lying belongs rather to Christian 
chivalry than to mere high breeding. 

* 

Imitation is like charity, when it is done for love it is 
lovely ; when it is done for show, hateful. 

The simple statement of the truths of nature must in itself 
be pleasing to every order of mind, because every truth of 
nature is more or less beautiful. 

There is a moral as well as material truth ; a truth of im- 
pression as well as of form, of thought as well as of matter, 
and the truth of impression and thought is a thousand times 
the more important of the two. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 185 

# 

In order to deal with words rightly, this is the habit you 
must form. Nearly every word in your language has been 
first a word of some other language — of Saxon, German, 
French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern and primi- 
tive dialects.) And many words have been all these ; — that 
is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, French or Ger- 
man next, and English last ; undergoing a certain change of 
sense and use on the lips of each nation ; but retaining a deep 
vital meaning which all good scholars feel in employing them, 
even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, 
learn it ; young or old — girl or boy — whoever you may be, 
if you think of reading seriously learn your Greek alphabet ; 
then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and when- 
ever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. 
Read Max Mtiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, 
after that, never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. 
It is severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, interest- 
ing, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain to 
your character in power and precision, will be quite incal- 
culable. 

# * 
Words, if they are not watched will do deadly work some- 
times. There are masked words droning and skulking about 
us in Europe just now, — (there never were so many, owing 
to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
44 information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to 



186 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

the teaching of catechisms and phrases at school instead of 
human meanings) there are masked words abroad, I say, 
which nobody understands, but which everybody uses. . . . 
There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never 
diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these 
masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's 
ideas; whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most 
cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to take care 
of for him ; the word at last comes to have an infinite power 
over him, you cannot get at him but by its ministry. 

Let the accent of words be watched by all means, but let 
their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will 
do the work. 

A few words well chosen and well distinguished, will do 
work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, 
equivocally, in the function of another. 

It takes a whole life to learn any language perfectly. But 
you can easily ascertain the meanings through which the Eng- 
lish word has passed ; and those which in a good writer's 
work it must still bear. 

The derivation of Words is like that of Rivers, there is 
one real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far 
up among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and comes into 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 187 

service, it takes on the force of other words from other 
sources, and becomes quite another word, — often much more 
than one word after the junction — a word as it were of many- 
waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. 

Language, I said, is only clear when it is sympathetic. You 
can, in truth, understand a man's word only by understanding 
his temper. Your own word is also in an unknown tongue 
to him unless he understands yours. And it is this which 
makes the art of language, if any one is to be chosen sepa- 
rately from the rest, as that which is fittest for the instrument 
of a gentleman's education. To teach the meaning of a word 
thoroughly is to teach the nature of the spirit that coined it ; 
the secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full 
charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the principles 
of beautiful speech have all been fixed by sincere and kindly 
speech. On the laws which have been determined by sin- 
cerity, false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterwards 
be constructed ; but all such utterance, whether in oration 
or poetry, is not only without permanent power, but it is 
destructive of the principles it has usurped. So long as no 
words are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of 
language goes on exalting itself ; but the moment it is shaped 
and chiselled on external principles, it falls into frivolity, 
and perishes. And this truth would have been long ago 
manifest, had it not been that in periods of advanced aca- 
demical science there is always a tendency to deny the sin- 



188 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

cerity of the first masters of language. Once learn to write 

gracefully in the manner of an ancient author, and we are 

apt to think that he also wrote in the manner of some one 

else. But no noble or right style was ever yet founded but 

out of a sincere heart. 

# 

All great languages invariably utter great things, and com- 
mand them ; they cannot be mimicked but by obedience ; the 
truth of them is inspiration because it is not only vocal but 
vital, and you can only learn to speak as those men spoke, by 
learning what those men were. 

# 

The curious thing is that, given the degree of practice, you 
will measure well or ill with the eye in proportion to the 
quantity of life in you. No one can measure with a glance 
when they are tired. 

Have you ever considered how much literal truth there is 
in the words — " The light of the body is the eye. If, there- 
fore, thine eye be evil " — and the rest? How can the eye be 
evil? How, if evil, can it fill the whole body with darkness? 

What is the meaning of having one's body full of darkness? 
It cannot mean merely being blind. Blind, you may fall into 
the ditch if you move ; but you may be well, if at rest. But 
to be evil-eyed is not that worse than to have no eyes? and 
instead of being only in darkness, to have darkness in us, 
portable, perfect, and eternal? 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 189 

# 

# * 

Literally, if the eye be pure, the body is pure, if the light 
of the body be but darkness, how great is that darkness ! 

* # 

A cat may look at a king ; — yes ; but can it see a king when 
it looks at him? The beasts of pre} r never seem to me to look, 
in our sense, at all. Their eyes are fascinated by the motion 
of anything, as a kitten's by a ball; they fasten, as if drawn 
by an inevitable attraction, on their food. But when a cat 
caresses you, it never looks at you. Its heart seems to be in 
its back and paws, not its eyes. It will rub itself against 
you, or pat you with velvet tufts instead of talons ; but you 
may talk to it an hour together, yet not rightly catch its eye. 
Ascend higher in the races of being — to the fawn, the dog, 
the horse ; jou will find that, according to the clearness of 
sight, is indeed the kindness of sight, and that at least the 
noble eyes of humanity look through humanity, from heart 
into heart, and with no mechanical vision. And the Light of 
the body is the eye — yes, and in happy life, the light of the 

heart also. 

# 

You do not see with the lens of the eye. You see through 

that, and by means of that, but you see with the Soul of the 

eye. 

# 

You ought to be glad in thinking how much more beauty 
God has made, than human eyes can ever see. 



190 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

* * 
How much need, that we should learn what eyes are ! And 
what vision they ought to possess — Science of sight granted 
only to clearness of soul; but granted in its fumess even to 
mortal eyes; for though, after the skin, worms may destroy 
their body, happy the pure in heart, for they, yet in their 
flesh, shall see the Light of Heaven, and know the will of 
God. 

Learn to obey good laws; and in a little while, you will 
reach the better learning — how to obey good Men, who are 
living, breathing, unblinded law ; and to subdue base and dis- 
loyal ones, recognizing in these the light, and ruling over 
these in the power of the Lord of Light and Peace, whose Do- 
minion is an everlasting Dominion, and His Kingdom from 
generation to generation. 

A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize and 
pronounce it or not ; a bad law is one that cannot hold, how- 
ever much you ordain and pronounce it. 

When people read, " the law came by Moses, but grace and 
truth by Christ," do they suppose the law was ungracious and 
untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or 
mercy) and truth for fulfilment ; — the whole forming one 
glorious Trinity of judgment mercy and truth. And if peo- 
ple would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier pur- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 191 

pose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would 
see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make 
most personally their own — (the Psalms) it is always the Law 
which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting 
mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost ; but 
those respecting the Law are always full of delight. David 
cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it, — he is never 
weary of its praise ; — " How love I Thy law ! it is my medi- 
tation all the day. Thy testimonies are my delight and my 
counsellors. Sweeter, also, than honey and the honeycomb." 

# 

The Divine law, instead of being contrary to mercy, is the 
foundation of all delight, and the guide of all fair and fortu- 
nate existence. 

# 

The law is fixed and everlasting ; uttered once, abiding for 
ever, as the sun, it may not be moved. It is "perfect convert- 
ing the soul ; " the whole question about the soul being, 
whether it has turned from darkness to light, acknowledged 
this law or not, — whether it is godly or ungodly? But the 
commandment is given momentarily to each man, according 
to the need. It does not convert ; it guides. It does not con- 
cern the entire purpose of the soul ; but it enlightens the eyes 
respecting a special act. The law is, "Do this always," the 
commandment, " Do thou this now : " often mysterious enough, 
and through the cloud; chilling, and with strange rain of 
tears ; yet always pure, the law converting, but the command- 



192 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ment cleansing; a rod, not for guiding merely, but for 
strengthening and tasting honey with. "Look how mine 
eyes have been enlightened, because I have tasted a little of 
this honey." 

It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and another to be 
devoted to the pursuit of pleasure ; and gaiety of heart during 
the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction 
in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether com- 
patible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of a 
deep internal seriousness of disposition. 

The highest and healthiest state which is competent to or- 
dinary humanity appears to be that which, accepting the 
necessity of recreation and yielding to the impulse of natural 
delight springing out of health and innocence, does indeed, 
condescend often to playfulness, but never without such deep 
love of God, of truth, and of humanity as shall make even its 
slightest word reverent, its idlest fancies profitable, and its 
keenest satire indulgent. 

A healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a healthy 
manner of work. 

Whatever we do to please ourselves and only for the sake 
of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the 
"pleasing thing;" not the useful thing. Play may be use- 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 193 

ful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or 
necessary;) but the use of it depends upon its being spon- 
taneous. 

The only right principle of action here, is to consider good 
and evil as defined by our natural sense of both; and to 
strive to promote the one, and to conquer the other, with as 
hearty endeavor as if there were, indeed, no other world 

than this. 

# 
* # 

Get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to 
correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their 
course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish of 
food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it 
palatable; neither, if, through years of folly, you misguide 
your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring 
round everything at last for the best. I tell you, positively, 
the world is not so constituted; the consequences of great 
mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and the 
happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which 
you have power, depends as literally on your own common 

sense and discretion as the excellence of the feast of a day. 

* 

In direct contention with material evil, you will find out 
the real nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various 
kinds of resistance, what is really the fault, and main an- 
tagonism to good ; also you will find the most unexpected 



194 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come thus 

down to us which the speculation of all our lives would never 

have raised us up to. 

* 

There's playing at literature, and playing at art — very dif- 
ferent, both, from working at literature, or working at art. 

You will always find that in proportion to the earnestness 
of our own faith, its tendency to accept a spiritual personality 
increases; and that the most vital and beautiful Christian 
temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the multitudinous 
ministry of living angels varied in rank and power. 

Suffering must, indeed, come, one way or another, in all 
great critical periods ; the only question, for us, is whether we 
will reach our ends through a chain of involuntary miseries, 
many of them useless, and all ignoble ; or whether we will 
know the worst at once, and deal with it by the wisely sharp 
methods of God-sped courage. 

, # , 

Right is right, and wrong is wrong. It is only the fool 
who does wrong and says he "did it for the best." And if 
there is one sort of people in the world that the Bible speaks 
harder of than another, it is fools. Their particular and 
chief way of saying, " There is no God" is this, of declar- 
ing that whatever their "public opinion" may be, is right; 
and that God's opinion is of no consequence. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 195 

* 

Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by 
which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special form 
of corruption ; and whether within Man, or in the external 
world, there is a power or condition of temptation which is 
perpetually endeavoring to reduce every glory of his soul, 
and every power of his life, to such corruption as is possible 
to them. And the more "beautiful they are, the more fearful 
is the death which is attached as a penalty to their degrada- 
tion. 

Without any discussion as to the personal existence or tra- 
ditional character of evil spirits, you will find it a practical 
fact, that external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, 
have power against you which your health and virtue depend 
on your resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil of them will 
pass into your own heart, and the ordinary and vulgarized 
phrase "the Devil" or betraying Spirit, "is in him," is the 
most scientifically accurate which you can apply to any per- 
son so influenced. 

You know how often it is difficult to be wisely charitable, 
to do good without multiplying the sources of evil. You 
know that to give alms is nothing unless j r ou give thought 
also; and that therefore it is written not " blessed is he that 
feedeth the poor," but " blessed is he that considereth the 
poor," and you know that a little thought, and a little kind- 



196 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ness are often worth more than a great deal of money. Now 

this charity of thought is not merely to be exercised toward 

the poor, it is to be exercised towards all men. 

# 

Though you should assuredly be able to hold your own in 
the straight ways of God, without always believing that the 
Devil is at your side, it is a state of mind much to be dreaded, 
that you should not know the Devil when you see him there. 
For the probability is, that when you see him, the way you 
are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading 
you into quite other neighborhoods than His. On His way, 
indeed, you may often, like Albert Diirer's Knight, see the 
Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops always farther 
and farther behind ; whereas if he jogs with you at your side, 
it is probably one of his own by-paths you are got on. And, 
in any case, it is a highly desirable matter that you should 
know him when you set eyes on him, which we are very far 
from doing in these days, having convinced ourselves that the 
graminivorous form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no 
longer. But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of 
him is here; in the world, with us, and within us; mock as 
you may; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and 
widely unprosperous. 

As within the human heart there is always set an instinct 
for all its real duties, — an instinct which you cannot quench, 
but only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it from its true 

I 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 197 

purpose; — as there is the intense instinct of love, which, 
rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life and, mis- 
directed, undermines them ; and must do either the one or the 
other ; so there is in the human heart an inextinguishable in- 
stinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains 
all the majesty of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them. 
Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of 
the heart of woman, God set it there, and God keeps it there. 
Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power ! 
— For Heaven's sake, and for Man's sake, desire it all you 
can. But what power? That is all the question. Power to 
destroy? the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath? Not so. 
Power to heal, to redeem, to guide and to guard. Power of 
the sceptre and shield ; the power of the ro\ al hand that heals 
in touching,— that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; the 
throne that is founded on the rock of justice, and descended 
from only by steps of mercy. Will you not covet such power 
as this? 

As the flower is gnawed by frost, so every human heart is 
gnawed by faithlessness. And as surely, — as irrevocably— 
as the fruit-bud falls before the east wind, so fails the power 
of the kindest human heart if you meet it with poison. 

Who shall measure the difference between the power of 
those who " do and teach " and who are greatest in the king- 
dom of earth, as of heaven — and the power of those who 



198 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

waste and consume — whose power at the fullest, is only the 
power of the moth and the rust. 

Pure Passion and its corruption. — Whatever influence it is, 
without or within us, which has a tendency to degrade the one 
towards the other, is literally and accurately " Satanic." And 
this treacherous or deceiving spirit is perpetually at work, so 
that all the worst evil among us is a betrayed or corrupted good. 
Take religion itself ; the desire of finding out God, and plac- 
ing one's self in some true son's or servant's relation to Him. 
The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving Spirit within us, or out- 
side of us ; mixes up our own vanity with this desire; makes 
us think that in our love to God Ave have established some con- 
nection with Him which separates us from our f ellowmen, and 
renders us superior to them. Then it takes but one wave of 
the Devil's hand ; and we are burning them alive for taking 
the liberty of contradicting us. 

Take the desire of teaching — the entirely unselfish and 
noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the truth 
we know, and guarding them from the errors we see them in 
danger of ; — there is no nobler, no more constant instinct in 
honorable breasts ; but let the Devil formalize, and mix the 
pride of a prof ession with it — get foolish people entrusted 
with the business of instruction, and make their giddy heads 
giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a submissive 
crowd — and you have it instantly corrupted into its own re- 
verse ; you have an alliance against the light, shrieking at the 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 199 

sun and moon, and stars, as profane spectre ; — a company of 
the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. 

Take the desire and faith of mutual help. ... let the 
Devil put pride of caste into it. . . . let the Devil put a 
few small personal interests into it, and you have all faithful 
deliberation on national law rendered impossible in the parlia- 
ments of Europe by the antagonism of parties. 

Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense of indig- 
nation against crime ; let the Devil color it with personal pas- 
sion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted 
men living for centuries in such bloody feud that every note, 
and word of their national songs, is a dirge, and every rock 
of their hills is a grave-stone. Take the love of beauty, and 
power of imagination, which are the source of every true 
achievement in art ; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, 
and they are stronger than the sword or the flame to blast 
the cities where they were born, into ruin without hope. 
Take the instinct of industry and ardor of commerce, which 
are meant to be the support and mutual maintenance of man ; 
let the Devil touch them with avarice, and you shall see the 
avenues of the exchange choked with corpses that have died 
of famine. 

I leave you to call this deceiving Spirit what you like — or 
to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to rec- 
ognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being 
fought with. ... I do not care what you call it, — whose 
history you believe of it, — nor what you yourself can imag- 



200 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ine about it; the origin, or nature, or name may be as you 
will, but the deadly reality of the thing is with us, and war- 
ring against us, and on our true war with it depends whatever 
life we can win. 

Passion, or "sensation." I am not afraid of the word; 
still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against 
sensation lately; but I can tell you, it is not less sensation we 
want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man 
and another — between one animal and another, — is pre- 
cisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were 
sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us ; if 
we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two 
by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good 
for us. But, being human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, 
we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our 
honor is precisely in proportion to our passion. 

What do you mean by " vulgarity? " You will find it a 
fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all 
vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vul- 
garity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of 
body and mind ; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a cleath- 
ful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every 
sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, 
without horror, and without pity. 

It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 20 1 

habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar ; 
they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are 
incapable of sympathy, — of quick understanding — of all that, 
in deep insistance on the common, but most accurate term, may 
be called the "tact" of touch-faculty of body and soul; that 
tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman 
has above all creatures; — fineness and fulness of sensation, 
beyond reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. 
Reason can but determine what is true ; — it is the God-given 
passion of humanity which alone can recognize what God 
has made good. 

True knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge, — 
not the first thought that comes, — so the true passion is dis- 
ciplined and tested passion — not the first passion that comes. 

No feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but 
only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
causes. There is a mean wonder as of a child who sees a jug- 
gler tossing golden balls, aud this is base if you will. But do 
you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, 
with which every human soul is called to watch the golden 
balls of heaven tossed through the night by the Hand that 
made them? There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening 
a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master's busi- 
ness ; and a noble curiosity, questioning in the front of dan- 



202 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ger, the source of the great river beyond the sand — the 
place of the great continents beyond the sea ; — a nobler 
curiosity still, which questions the Source of the River of 
Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven, — things 
which "the angels desire to look into." So the anxiety is 
ignoble with which you linger over the cause and catas- 
trophe of an idle tale ; but do you think the anxiety is less 
or greater, with which you watch, or ought to watch, the 
dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized 
nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, 
of your sensation that you have to deplore . . . sensa- 
tion which spends itself in bouquets and speeches ; in revel- 
lings and junketing; in sham fights and gay puppet shows, 
while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man 
by man, woman by woman, child by child, without an effort, 
or a tear. I said " minuteness " and " selfishness " of sensa- 
tion, but in a word, I ought to have said " injustice "or " un- 
righteous " of sensation. 

* * 
It was necessary that, in order to the understanding by 
man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be fore- 
shown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice. 
But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice at the time of 
Moses than He has now ; He never accepted as a propitiation 
for sin any sacrifice but the single one in prospective ; and 
that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, 
the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 203 

at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively 
demanded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only 
in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every 
day brought its claim of typical and material service or offer- 
ing, as now when He asks for none but that of the heart. 

* 

The feelings of the purest and most mightily passioned hu- 
man souls are likely to be the truest. Not, indeed, if they 
do not desire to know the truth, or blind themselves to it 
that they may please themselves with passion ; for then 
they are no longer pure ; but if continually seeking and ac- 
cepting the truth as far as it is discernible, they trust their 
Maker for the integrity of the instincts He has gifted them 
with, and rest in the sense of a higher truth which they can- 
not demonstrate, I think they will be most in the right so. 

* 

Was the glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or 
image His divine glory to the minds of His people? What! 
purple or scarlet necessary to the people who had seen the 
great river of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His con- 
demnation? What! golden lamp and cherub necessary for 
those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like a mantle 
on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their 
mortal lawgiver? — What! silver clasp and fillet necessary 
when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp 
in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his 
rider? Nay — not so. There was but one reason, and that 



204 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

an eternal one ; that as the covenant that He made with men 
was accompanied with some external sign of its contin- 
uance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of 
that covenant might be marked and signified by use, in some 
external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of 
themselves and theirs to His will ; and that their gratitude 
to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at 
once their expression and their enduring testimony in the 
presentation to Him, not only of the firstling of the herd and 
fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithes of time, 
but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought 
that invents, and the hand that labors; of wealth of wood 
and weight of stone ; of the strength of iron, and of the light 
of gold. 

Was it necessary to the completeness, as a type of the 
Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of 
divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person 
in whose behalf it was offered? — On the contrary, the sacri- 
fice which it foreshowed was to be God's free gift. . . . 
Yet this costliness was generally a condition of the acceptable- 
ness of the sacrifice — " Neither will I offer unto the Lord 
my God of that which doth cost me nothing." — That costli- 
ness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human 
offerings at all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it 
must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him 
afterwards, which it has never been. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 205 

# 

The less valuable offering was rejected not because it did 
not image Christ nor fulfil the purpose of sacrifice, but because 
it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of its pos- 
sessions to Him who gave them ; and because it was a bold 
dishonoring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be 
infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now 
see reason to present unto God, a condition of their accep- 
tableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the 

best of their kind. 

# 

It has been said — it ought always 1 to be said, for it is true, 
— that a better and more honorable offering is made to our 
Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of 
His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name 
is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assur- 
edly it is so ; woe to all who think any other kind or manner of 
offering may in any wise take the place of these ! Do the peo- 
ple need place to pray, and calls to hear His word ? Then it 
is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits; let us 
have enough first of walls and roofs. 

Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread 
from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we 
want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this ; but 
let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason 
for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is 
not between God's house and His poor; it is not between 



206 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

God's house and His gospel. It is between God's house and 
ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors? No fres- 
coed fancies on our roofs? No niched statuary in our corri- 
dors! No gilded furniture in our chambers? No costly 
stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of them been of- 
ered? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough 
has been devoted to the great purpose of human steward- 
ship, and that there remains to us what we spend in luxury; 
but there is a greater and prouder luxury than this selfish one 
— that of bringing a portion of such things as these into 
sacred service, and presenting them for a memorial, that our 
pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remem- 
brance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. 
And until this has been done, I do not see how such posses- 
sions can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the 
feeling which would arch our own gates and pave our own 
thresholds, and leave the Church with its narrow door and 
foot- worn sill ; the feeling which enriches our own chambers 
with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare walls and 
mean compass of the temple. 

The tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domes- 
tic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in do- 
mestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if collectively 
offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every 
town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a. 
blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and} 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 207 

as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lift- 
ing its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. 

I have said for every town ; I do not want a marble church 
for every village ; nay, I do not want marble churches at all 
for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would 
build them. The church has no need of any visible splendors ; 
her power is independent of them, her purity is in some de- 
gree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary 
is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple ; and it may 
be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty 
has ever been the source of any increase of effective piety; 
but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not 
the church we want, but the sacrifice ; not the emotion of ad- 
miration, but the act of adoration ; not the gift, but the giv- 
ing. 

There are liberties and liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal- 
clear, and arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the air like 
white troops of fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, 
amidst bankless boundless marsh — soaking in slow shallow- 
ness, as it will, hither and thither, listless, among the poison- 
ous reeds and unresisting slime — it is free also. TVe may 
choose which liberty we like — the restraint of voicef ul rock, 
or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. 

# ' % 

I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly 
free creature than in the common house fly. Not free only, 



208 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 

but brave ; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human 
republican could by any philosophy exalt himself. There is 
no courtesy in him ; he does not care whether it is king or 
clown whom he teases ; and in every step of his swift mechan- 
ical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, 
there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, per- 
fect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the 
world's having been made for flies. Strike at him with your 
hand ; and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of 
the matter is, what to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, 
ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive 
field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crash- 
ing clown with an aim. That is the exterual aspect of it ; the 
inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unim- 
portant occurrence — one of the momentary conditions of his 
active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights 
on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, 
nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive 
opinion iuall matters ; not an unwise one, usually, for his own 
ends ; — and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to 
do — no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earth-worm has his 
digging; the bee her gathering and building ; the spider her 
cunning net-work; the ant her treasury and accounts. All 
these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business. 
But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber — a black in- 
carnation of caprice — wandering, investigating, flitting, 
flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 209 

feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's windows to 
those of the butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place 
on your cab-horse's-back, to the brown spot in the road, from 
which, as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry repub- 
lican buzz — what freedom is like his? 

# 

For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is as 
sorrowful a type as you will easily find. ... He has no 
books — nothing but his own weary thoughts for company, 
and a group of those free flies, whom he snaps at with sullen 
ill success : his fidelity only seals his fate. . . . Yet of 
the two, would we rather be watch-dog, or fly? 

Indeed, the first point we all have to determine is, not how 
free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small 
importance to any of us whether we get liberty ; but of the 
greatest that we deserve it. ... I tell you, lover of 
liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it is similarly 
between life and death. You will get wiser and stronger 
only by doing right, whether forced or not; the prime, the 
one need is to do that, under whatever compulsion, until you 
can do it without compulsion. And then you are a Man. 

* 

Your individuality was given you by God, and in your race ; 
and if you have any, to speak of, you will want no liberty. 
. . . But if you have no individuality, if there is no true 
character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed want 
to be free. . . . You ask for freedom of thought ; but 



210 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

if you have not sufficient grounds for thought, you have no 
business to think ; and if you have sufficient grounds, you 
have no business to think wrong. Only one thought is pos- 
sible to you, if you are wise — your liberty is geometrically 
proportionate to your folly. 

How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of 
that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty; most 
treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms ; for the feeblest ray of 
reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, 
but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the 
universe. There can never be. The stars have it not ; the 
earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we men have the 
mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punish- 
ment. 

If there be any one principle more widely than another 
confessed by every utterance or more sternly than another im- 
printed on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle 
is not Liberty, but Law. 

"All this glory and activity of our age; what are they 
owing to, but to our freedom of thought?" In a measure 
they are owing — what good is in them — to the discovery 
of many lies, and the escape from the power of evil. Not to 
liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or cruel masters. 
Brave men have dared to examine lies which had long been 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 2 1 1 

taught, not because they were/ree-thinkers, but because they 
were such stern and close thinkers that the lie could no longer 
escape them. 

, * 
I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of 
right freedom will be understood, and when men will see 
that to obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence 
to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best 
kind of liberty — liberty from care. 

All redemption must begin in subjection, and in the re- 
covery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin 
and devastation begin in the loss of that sense. 

At present, "advancement in life" means becoming con- 
spicuous in life ; — obtaining a position which shall be ac- 
knowledged by others to be respectable or honorable. We do 
not understand by this advancement, in general, the mere mak- 
ing of money, but the being known to have made it ; not the 
accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have 
accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of 
our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of 
noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones; and, on 
the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average hu- 
manity; the greatest efforts of the race have always been 
traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes 
to the love of pleasure. 



212 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

# 

It is the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the 
stimulus of toil, and balm of repose ; so closely does it touch 
the very springs of life, that the wounding of our vanity is 
always spoken of (and truly) as in its measure mortal ; we 
call it "mortification" using the same expression which we 
should apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And 
although few of us may be physicians enough to recognize 
the various effects of this passion upon health and energy, I 
believe most honest men know and would at once acknowl- 
edge, its leading power with them as a motive. The seaman 
does not commonly desire to be made captain only because 
he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor 
on board. He wants to be made captain that he may be 
called captain. The clergjinan does not usually want to be 
made a bishop only because he believes no other hand can, 
as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. 
He wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called 
" My Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to en- 
large, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes 
that no one else can as well serve the state upon the throne ; 
but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your 
Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such utter- 
ance. 

* # 
There will be always a number of men who would fain set 
themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object 



THO UGHTS OF BEA UTY. 213 

of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an unedu- 
cated class, inferior in intellect, and more or less cowardly. 
It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, 
or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts ; 
as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner 
the principal object of them. All healthy people like their 
dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. 
So all healthily-minded people like making money — ought to 
like it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning it, but the main 
object of their lives is not money . . . with all brave and 
rightly trained men, their work is first, their fee second, — 
very important always, but still second. But in every nation, 
as I said, there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly 
and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as cer- 
tainly the fee is first, and the work second, as with brave 
people the work is first and the fee second. And this is no 
small distinction. 

It is the whole distinction in a man ; distinction between 
life and death in him, between heaven and hell for him. You 
cannot serve two masters ; — you must serve one or other. 
If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is 
your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your 
fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your mas- 
ter, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil. 

* 

# * 

Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do 
great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all 



214 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

common wickedness. . . . He was only a common money- 
lover, and like all money-lovers, didn't understand Christ; 
. . . The power which money, once obtained, has over 
the labor of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its 
produce to himself, except the laborer's food — that, is the 
modern Judas's way of " carrying the bag," and bearing what 
is put therein. 

Whenever money is the principal object of life with either 
man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and does 
harm both in the getting and spending ; but when it is not 
the principal object, it and all other things will be well got, 
and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, of 
whether money is the principal object with him, or not. If 
in mid-life he could pause and say, "Now I have enough to 
live upon, I'll live upon it ; and having well earned it, I will 
also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came 
into it," then money is not principal with him ; but if, having 
enough to live upon in the manner befitting his character and 
rank, he still wants to make more, and to die rich, then 
money is the principal object with him, and it becomes a 
curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it after 
him. 

The money power is always imperfect and doubtful ; there 
are many things which cannot be retained by it. Many joys 
may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 215 

many fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with 
it. . . . A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and the 
wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another's with a 
shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not neces- 
sarily diminish in spending. 

* # 

Twenty people can gain money for one who can use it; and 
the vital question, for individual and for nation, is never 
" how much do they make? " but " to what purpose do they 

spend? " 

* 

# # 

Have you observed that all Christ's main teachings, by di- 
rect order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent 
emotion, regard the use and mis-use of money? We might 
have thought, if we had been asked what a divine teacher 
was most likely to teach, that He would have left inferior 
persons to give directions about money ; and Himself spoken 
only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of the 
passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. 
But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He 
does not speak parables about them for all men's memoiy, 
nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all 
men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He 
writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He formed her. 
Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a 
giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in 
buyers and sellers in His house. One would have thought 



216 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

there were people in that house twenty times worse than they ; 
— Caiaphas and his like — false priests, false prayer-makers, 
false leaders of the people — who needed putting to silence 
or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge is only 
against the traffickers and thieves. The two most intense of 
all the parables ; the two which lead the rest in love and ter- 
ror (that of the Prodigal and Dives) relate, both of them, to 
management of riches. The practical order given to the only 
seeker of advice of whom it is recorded that Christ " loved 

him " is briefly about his property. " Sell that thou hast." 

# 

The love of money, with the parallel, looseness in manage- 
ment of it, is indeed the root of all evil. 

* 

It is easy to call yourself the chief of sinners, expecting 
every sinner round you to decline — or return — the compli- 
ment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own 
relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, 
but in man's sight ; and redemption is indeed begun. 

* 

He himself has sinned . . . that is the hard lesson to 
learn and the beginning of faithful lessons. All right and 
fruitful humility and purging of Heart, and seeing of God, is 
in that. 

Be sure of one thing, that, however much you may know, 
and whatever advantages you may possess, and however good 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 217 

you may be, you have not been singled out, by the God who 
made you, from all the others in the world, to be especially 
informed respecting His own nature and character. You 
have not been born in a luminous point upon the surface of 
the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to 
you from your youth up, and when everything you were 
taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon 
you, right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions 
that by any chance could enter and hold your empty . . . 
heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that you have 
been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favorite of the 
Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punc- 
tual place, when and where pure Divine truth has been 
sifted from the errors of the Nations. 

However good you may be, you have faults; — however 
dull you may be, you can find out what some of them are ; 
and however slight they may be, you had better make some 
— not too painful, but patient — effort to get quit of them. 

Something which befalls you may seem a great misfor- 
tune ; — you meditate over its effects on you personally ; and 
begin to think that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
this or that or the other of profound significance ; and that 
all the angels in heaven have left their business for a little 
while, that they may watch its effects on your mind. But give 
up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; examine a little 



218 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

what misfortunes, greater a thousandfold, are happening, 
every second, to twenty times worthier persons; and your 
self-consciousness will change into pity and humility; and 
you will know yourself, so far as to understand that " there 
hath nothing taken thee but what is common to men." 

None can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless 
they have personally measured the strength to be overcome. 

There are two forms of discontent; one laborious, the 
other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of la- 
borious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is 
peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special 
connection of meekness with contentment that it is prom- 
ised that the meek shall " inherit the earth." Neither covet- 
ous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything, they can but 
consume. Only contentment can possess. The most helpful 
and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be clone for 
humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best 
teaching must be done) not how "to better themselves," but 
how to "satisfy themselves." . . . And, in order to teach 
men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand 
the art and joy of humble life, — this, at present, of all arts 
or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life 
— that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but 
only a sweet continuance ; not excluding the idea of fore- 
sight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no thought for 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 219 

coming days; so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, 
or provision, but wholly of accumulation ; — the life of do- 
mestic affection, and domestic peace, peace, full of sensitive- 
ness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure ; — there- 
fore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world. 

We should be afraid of doing wrong, and of that only, 
otherwise, if we only don't do wrong for fear of being 

punished, we have done wrong in our hearts already. 

* 

* * 

The increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make 
the soul larger or smaller, in the sight of God. All the knowl- 
edge man can gain is as nothing, but that the soul, for which 
the great scheme of redemption was laid, be it ignorant or be 
it wise, is all in all, and in the activity, strength, health and 
well-being of the soul lies the main difference in His sight 

between one man and another. 

# 

# # 

Observe, the difference between tasting knowledge, and 
hoarding it. In this respect it is like food; since in some 
measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries for 
future use ; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not 
fed upon or enjoyed, but in store . . . men may starve 
in their own granaries . . . accumulate their store, 
rather than receive nourishment from it. . . . Most of 
us are to receive day by day our daily bread, and shall be as 
well nourished and as fit for our daily labor, and often, also, 



220 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

fit for nobler and more divine labor, in feeding from the 
barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse of oil 
that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty, 
and our presses bursting with new wine. 

The safest way . . . is to assure ourselves that true 

knowledge of anything or any creature is only of the good 

of it ; that its nature and life are in that, and that what is 

diseased, — that is to say, unnatural and mortal, — you must 

cut away from it in contemplation, as you would in surgery. 

# 

Examine the effect of knowledge and see whether the trees 
of knowledge and of life are one now, any more than in 
Paradise. Feel that the real animating power of knowledge 
is only in the moment of its being first received, when it fills 
us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the pre- 
vious ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. 
That man is always happy who is in the presence of some- 
thing which he cannot know to the full, which he is always 
going on to know. This is the necessary condition of a 
finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely directed in- 
telligence, this, therefore its happy state, — but, observe, a 
state not of triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy 
rather in the continual discovery of new ignorance, con- 
tinual self-abasement, continual astonishment. . . . The 
whole difference between a man of genius and other men is 
that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 22 1 

large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of 
much knowledge — conscious rather — of infinite ignorance, 
and yet infinite power ; a fountain of eternal admiration, de- 
light, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of 

visible and governable things around him. 

# 

All are to be men of genius in their degree — rivulets or 
rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure ; 
not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things known 
and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of 
things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the liv- 
ing banks, on which they partly refresh, and partly reflect 
the flowers, and so pass on. 

Knowledge is mental food, and is exactly to the spirit what 
food is to the body. ... It may be mixed and disguised 
by art, till it becomes unwholesome ; it may be refined, sweet- 
ened, and made palatable until it has lost all its power of 
nourishment ; and even of its best kind, it may be eaten to 
surfeiting and minister to disease and death. 

* * 
Man has the choice of stooping in science beneath himself, 
and striving in science beyond himself; and the " Know thy- 
self " is, for him, not a law to which he must in peace sub- 
mit ; but a precept which of all others is the most painful to 
understand, and humiliating; and this alike, whether it be 
held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or above. For, 



222 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

singularly enough, men are always conceited of the meanest 
science : — 

" Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit? 
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? " 

It is just those who grope with the mole, and cling with 
the bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings. 

* 

Do you think you can know yourself by looking into your- 
self? Never. You can know what you are only by looking 

out of yourself. 

* 

It is very probable, that if you could look into your heart 
from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black 
hole indeed : Nay, the Sun may sometimes think good to tell 
you that it looks so to Him ; but He will come into it, and 
make it very cheerful for you for all that, if you don't put 
the shutters up. 

"All things," says Hooker, — "God only excepted, — be- 
side the nature which they have in themselves, receive exter- 
nally some perfection from other things." Hence the appear- 
ance of separation or isolation in anything, and of self-depen- 
dence, is an appearance of imperfection ; and all appearances 
of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both 
as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typi- 
cal of that Unity which we attribute to God; that Unity 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 223 

which consists not in His own singleness or separation, 
but in the necessity of His inherence in all things that 
be, without which no creature of any kind could hold exist- 
ence for a moment. Which necessity of Divine essence I 
think it better to speak of as comprehensiveness, than as 
unity, because unity is often understood in the sense of one- 
ness or singleness, instead of universality, whereas the only 
Unity which by any means can become grateful or an object 
of hope to men, and whose types therefore in material things 
can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words and 
prayer of Christ before His crossing of the Kedron brook. 
11 Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also which shall 
believe on me through their word. That they all may be one, 
as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee." 

And so there is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any 
creature, but it is capable of an unity of some kind with 
other creatures, and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, 
and a pleasure also for the beholding of all other creatures that 
can behold. So the unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy, 
and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their love ; 
and these are their delight, and their strength, for their 
strength is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their 
delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpet- 
ual currents of good, their inseparable dependency on each 
other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their 
Creator's ; and so the unity of earthly creatures is their power 
and their peace, not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed 



224 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and 
the living power of support, of hands that hold each other 
and are still ; and so the unity of matter is, in its noblest 
form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples 
for the spirit, and in its lower form, the sweet and strange 
affinity, which gives it the glory of its orderly elements, and 
the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the 
dust into the crystal, and separates the waters that be above 
the firmament from the waters that be beneath; and in its 
lowest form, it is the working and walking and clinging to- 
gether that gives their power to the winds, and its syllables 
and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, and 
their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the mount- 
ains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its 
glory and for others good. 

Of the appearance of unity, as of unity itself, there are 
several kinds which it will be found convenient to consider 
separately. Thus there is the unity of different and separate 
things, subjected to one and the same influence, which may 
be called subjectional unity, and this is the unity of the 
clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they 
are ordered by the electric currents, and this is the unity of 
the sea waves, and this of the bending and undulation of the 
forest masses, and in creatures capable of will it is the unity 
of will or inspiration. And there is unity of origin, which 
we may call original unity, which is of things arising from 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 225 

one spring and source, and speaking always of their brother- 
hood, and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the 
trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the 
beams of light, and in spiritual creatures it is their filial re- 
lation to Him from whom they have their being. And there 
is unity of sequence, which is that of things that form links 
in chains, and steps in ascent, and stages in journeys, and 
this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their 
continuance from one thing to another, and it is the passing 
upwards and downwards of beneficent effects among all 
things, and it is the melody of sounds, and the beauty of con- 
tinuous lines, and the orderly succession of motions and 
times. And in spiritual creatures it is their own constant 
building up by true knowledge and continuous reasoning to 
higher perfection, and the singleness and straightforward- 
ness of their tendencies to more complete communion with 
God. And there is the unity of membership, which Ave may 
cal^essential unity, which is the unity of things separately 
imperfect into a perfect whole, and this is the great unity of 
which other unities are but parts and means ; it is in matter 
the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among 
spiritual creatures, their love and happiness and very life in 

God. 

# 

As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exer- 
tion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of 
the eternal mind and power : it is the " I Am " of the Creator 



223 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

opposed to the "I become" of all creatures; it is the sign 
alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of sur- 
prise, the supreme power which is incapable of labor, the 
supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the 
stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the 
variable waters of ministering creatures. 

The desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor 
unworthy one, but a longing for renovation, and for escape 
from a state where every phase is mere preparation for an- 
other equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall 
have become possible through perfection. Hence the great 
call of Christ to men, that call on which St. Augustine fixed 
essential expression of Christian hope, is accompanied by the 
promise of rest ; and the death bequest of Christ to men is 
peace. 

Repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a 
simple appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the 
massy forms of a mountain or rock, accompanied by the 
lulling effect of all mighty sight and sound, which all feel and 
none define, or else it is repose proper, the rest of things in 
which there is vitality or capability of motion actual or im- 
agined ; and with respect to these the expression of repose 
is greater in proportion to the amount and sublimity of the 
action which is not taking place, as well as to the intensity 
of the negation of it. Thus we speak not of repose in a 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 227 

stone, because the motion of a stone has nothing in it of 
energy nor vitality, neither its repose of stability. But hav- 
ing once seen a great rock come clown a mountain side, we 
have a noble sensation of its rest, now bedded immovably 
among the under fern, because the power and fearfulness of 
its motion were great, and its stability and negation of mo- 
tion are now great in proportion. Hence the imagination, 
w T hich delights in nothing mere than the enhancing of the 
characters of repose, effects this usually by either attributing 
to things visibly energetic an ideal stability, or to things 
visibly stable an ideal activity or vitality. Hence Words- 
worth, of the cloud, which in itself having too much of 
changef ulness for his purpose, is spoken of as one, "that 
heareth not the loucl winds when they call, and moveth alto- 
gether, if it move at all." And again of children, which, 
that it may remove from them the child restlessness, the 
imagination conceives as rooted flowers "Beneath an old 
gray oak as violets lie." On the other hand, the scattered 
rocks which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, are 
gifted with it by the living image ; they ' • lie couched around 
as like a flock of sheep. " 

Thus we see repose demands for its expression the im- 
plied capability of its opposite, energy, and this even in its 
lower manifestations in rocks and stones and trees. By com- 
paring the modes in which the mind is disposed to regard 
the boughs of a fair and vigorous tree, motionless in the sum- 
mer air, with the effect produced by one of these same boughs 



228 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

hewn square and used for threshold or lintel, the reader will at 
once perceive the connection of vitality with repose and the 
part they both bear in beauty. But that which in lifeless things 
ennobles them by seeming to indicate life, ennobles higher 
creatures by indicating the exaltation of their earthly vitality 
into a Divine vitality ; and raising the life of sense into the life 
of faith — faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adher- 
ence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, 
in which from all time it has been the test as the shield of 
the true being and life of man, or in the still higher sense of 
truthfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of God : in 
which form it has been exhibited under the Christian dis- 
pensation. For whether in one form or other form, whether 
the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion 
fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, 
as in the Thermopylae camp ; or the happier faithfulness of 
children in the good giving of their Father, and of subjects in 
the conduct of their king, as in the " Stand still, and see the 
salvation of God " of the Red Sea shore, there is rest and peace- 
fulness, the " standing still" in both, the quietness of action 
determined, of spirit unalarmecl, of expectation unimpatient ; 
beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-com- 
mand and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncal- 
culating love of the creature, but more beautiful yet when the 
rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no 
more in the resolution we have taken, but in the Hand we 
hold. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 229 

Hence I think there is no desire more intense or more ex- 
alted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds 
for the evidences of repose. 

About the river of human life there is a wintry wind, 
though a heavenly sunshine ; the iris colors its agitation, the 
frost fixes upon its repose. 

Let us beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, 
which so long as they are torrent-tossed, and thunder-stricken, 
maintain their majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the 
storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them, and the lichen to 
feed on them, and are ploughed down into dust. 

Any material object which can give us pleasure in the sim- 
ple contemplation of its outward qualities, without any direct 
and definite exertion of the intellect, I call in some way or in 
some degree, beautiful. . . . Observe, I do not mean by 
excluding direct exertion of the intellect from ideas of beauty 
that beauty has no effect upon nor connection with the intel- 
lect. All our moral feelings are so interwoven with our intel- 
lectual powers, that we cannot affect the one, without in some 
degree, addressing the other ; and in all high ideas of beauty 
it is more than probable that much of the pleasure depends on 
delicate and untraceable perceptions of fitness, propriety, and 
relation, which are purely intellectual, and through which we 
arrive at our noblest ideas of what is commonly and rightly 



230 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

called ' ' intellectual beauty. " But there is yet no immediate ex- 
ertion of the intellect ; that is to say, if a person, receiving even 
the noblest ideas of simple beauty, be asked why he likes the 
object exciting them, he will not be able to give any distinct 
reason, nor to trace in his mind any formal thought to which 
he can appeal as a source of pleasure. He will say that the 
thing gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not 

be able to say why, or how. 

* 

Ideas of Beauty are among the noblest which can be pre- 
sented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying 
it according to their degree ; and it would appear that we are 
intended by the Deity to be constantly under their influence, 
because there is not one single object in nature which is not 
capable of conveying them, and which, to the rightly perceiv- 
ing mind, does not present an incalculably greater number of 
beautiful, than of deformed parts ; there being in fact scarcely 
anything in pure, undiseased Nature like positive deformity, 
but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of 
permitted contrast as may render all around them more val- 
uable by their opposition ; spots of blackness in creation, to 
make its colors felt. But although everything in Nature is 
more or less beautiful, every species of object has its own 
kind and degree of beauty ; some being in their own nature 
more beautiful than others, and few, if any individuals, pos- 
sessing the utmost beauty of which the species is capable. 
This utmost degree of specific beauty, necessarily co-existent 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 231 

with the utmost perfection of the object in other respects, is 
the ideal of the object. 

The sensation of Beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor 
is it intellectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, 
right, and open state of the heart, both for its truth and its 
intensity, insomuch that even the right after-action of the in- 
tellect upon facts of beaut}*- so apprehended, is dependent on 
the acuteness of the heart-feeling about them ; and thus the 
apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all 
others, that men are alienated from the life of God, " through 
the ignorance that is in them, having the understanding dark- 
ened, because of the hardness of their hearts; " for we do in- 
deed see constantly that men having naturally acute percep- 
tions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart, 
nor with their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive 
good from it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, 
and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, 
until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the 
sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. 

That which is required in order to the attainment of accu- 
rate conclusions respecting the essence of the beautiful, is 
nothing more than earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to 
our impression of it, by which those which are shallow, false, 
or peculiar to times and temperaments may be distinguished 
from those that are eternal. 



232 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

# 

We must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of pos- 
itive opinions on the subject of beauty; for every one of us 
has peculiar sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him 
in certain scenes and things, sources which are sealed to 

others. 

* 

Beauty has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the 
elements by which the human soul is continually sustained ; 
it is therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects, 
but in order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, and 
weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degree. 

There is not any soul so sunk but that it shall in some 
measure feel the impression of mental beauty in the human 
features, and detest in others its own likeness, and in itself 
despise that which of itself it has made. 

There is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momen- 
tarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features, 
neither on them only, but on the whole body, both the in- 
telligence and moral faculties have operation, for even all the 
movements and gestures, however slight, are different in their 
modes according to the mind that governs them, and on the 
gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace 
of action, and through continuance of this a grace of form, 
which by no discipline may be taught or attained. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 233 

* 

Of the sweetness which that higher serenity — of hap- 
piness — and the dignity which that higher authority — of 
Divine law, and not human reason — can and must stamp on 
the features, it would be futile to speak at length, for I sup- 
pose that both are acknowledged on all hands, and that there 
is not any beauty but theirs to which men pay long obedience ; 
at all events, if not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words 
explicable with what divine lines and lights the exercise of 
godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and 
coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure 
will consign the loveliest. 

There is a certain period of the soul culture when it begins 
to interfere with some of the characters of typical beauty 
belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect 
wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning 
its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earth- 
en vessel; and that there is, in this indication of subduing 
of the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps 
a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect ma- 
terial form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak 
presence of Paul, than of the fair and ruddy countenance of 
David. 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only 
consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in the mem- 



234 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

ory of happy and useful years — full of sweet records ; and 
from the joining of this with that yet more majestic childish- 
ness, which is still full of change and promise ; — opening al- 
ways—modest at once and bright, with hope of better things 
to be won and to be bestowed. There is no old age where 
there is still that promise — it is eternal youth. 

If we can perceive beauty in everything of God's doing, we 
may argue that we have reached the true perception of its 
universal laws. 

This is the true nature of home — it is the place of Peace ; 
the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, 
doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not 
home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate 
into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or 
hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either hus- 
band or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it 
is then only a part of that outer world which you have roof eel 
over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, 
a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by 
Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those 
whom tlie}^ can receive with love, — so far as it is this, and 
roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, — 
shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos 
in the stormy sea ; — so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils 
the praise, of home. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 235 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the glow- 
worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot ; 
but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble woman it 
stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or 
painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for 
those who else were homeless. This, then, I believe to be, 
— will you not admit it to be, — the woman's true place and 
power? But do you not see that to fulfil this, she must — as 
far as one can use such terms of a human creature — be in- 
capable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right or 
nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good ; in- 
stinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self -development, 
but for self-renunciation; wise, not that she may set herself 
above her husband, but that she may never fail from his 
side ; wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless 
pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely va- 
riable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service — the 
true changef ulness of woman. In that great sense — "La 
donna elmobile," not " Quel pimn al vento;" no, nor yet 
" Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made ; " 
but variable as the light, manifold in fair and serene division, 
that it may take the color of all that it falls upon, and 
exalt it. 

Generally we are under an impression that a man's duties 
are public, and a woman's private. But this is not altogether 



236 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

so. A man has a personal work or clnty, relating to his own 
home, and a public work or duty, which is the expansion of 
the other, relating to the State. So a woman has a personal 
work and duty, relating to her own home, and a public work 
and duty which is also the expansion of that. . . . The 
man's work for his own home is, to secure its maintenance, 
progress and defence ; the woman's to secure its order, com- 
fort, and loveliness. 

If men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples 
— temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in 
which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; and 
there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a 
strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and par- 
ents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaith- 
ful to our father's honor, or that our own lives are not such as 
would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each 
man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revo- 
lution of his own life. . . . Our God is a household gocl, 
as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man's 
dwelling. 

A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her 
husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. 
His command of it should be foundational and progressive, 
hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 237 

a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
the discipline and training of their mental powers in such 
branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social ser- 
vice ; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any language 
or science he learns, thoroughly, while a woman ought to know 
the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her 
to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his 
best friends. 

* * 
Consider whether we ought not to be more in the habit of 
seeking honor from our descendants than from our ancestors ; 
thinking it better to be nobly remembered than to be nobly 
born ; and striving so to live, that our son and our son's sons, 
for ages to come, might still lead their children to the doors 
out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying: 
" Look ! this was his home, this was his chamber." 

# 

There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge 
and superficial knowledge — between a firm beginning and a 
feeble smattering. A woman may always help her husband 
by what she knows, however little ; by what she half -knows, 
or mis-knows, she will only tease him. 
* * # 

What the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of 
order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she 
is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, 
distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. 



238 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

* # 

Lady means " bread-giver " or " loaf -giver," and Lord means 
" maintainer of laws," and both titles have reference, not to 
the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread 
which is given to the household ; but to law maintained for 
the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So 
that a Lord has a legal claim only to his title in so far as he is 
the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady 
has legal claim to her title, only so far as she communicates 
that help to the poor representatives of her Master, which 
women once, ministering to Him of their substance, were per- 
mitted to extend to that Master Himself ; and where she is 
known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 

# * 

If there were to be any difference between a girl's education 
and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be 
earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and seri- 
ous subjects ; and that her range of literature should be not 
more, but less frivolous, calculated to add the qualities of 
patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought 
and quickness of wit, and also to keep her in a lofty and 
pure element of thought. 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish in speaking of 
the " superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could be 
compared in similar things. — Each has what the other has 
not; each completes the other, and is completed by the other : 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 239 

they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of 
both depends on each asking and receiving from the other 
what the other only can give. 

# # 
The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is 
eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
His intellect is for speculation and invention ; his energy for 
adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, 
wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for 
rule, not for batMe, — and her intellect is not for invention or 
creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. 
She sees the qualities of things, their claims and their places. 
Her great function is Praise ; she enters into no contest, but 
infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office and 
place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The 
man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all 
peril and trial: — to him, therefore, the failure, the offence, 
the inevitable error ; often he must be wounded, or subdued, 
often misled, and always hardened. But he guards the woman 
from all this ; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she 
herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no 
cause of error or offence. 

The best women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to 
know ; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their 
husband and the nobleness of their children ; they are only to 
be divined, not discerned by the stranger. 



240 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

There never was a time when wilder words were spoken, 
or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this ques- 
tion ; — the relation of the womanly to the manly nature, — their 
different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to 
have been yet measured with entire consent. We hear of 
the mission and of the rights of Woman, as if these could 
ever be separated from the mission and the rights of Man ; 
as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind 
and of irreconcilable claims. This, at least, is wrong. And not 
less wrong — perhaps even more foolishly wrong — is the 
idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of 
her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, 
and supported altogether in her weakness by the preeminence 
of his fortitude. 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her 
who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be 
helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 

Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some clear and 
harmonious idea of what womanly mind and virtue are in 
power and office with respect to man's; and how their re- 
lations, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and 
honor, and authority of both. . . . Let us see whether 
the greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are 
agreed in any wise on this point ; let us hear the testimony 
they have left respecting what they held to be the true dig- 
nity of woman, and her mode of help to man. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 241 

And first let us take Shakespeare. Shakespeare has no 

heroes ; he has only heroines There is hardly a 

play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave 
hope, and errorless purpose : Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, 
Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, 
Rosalind, Helena, and last and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are 
all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of hu- 
manity. . . . The catastrophe of every play is caused 
always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, 
if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and 

failing that, there is none. 

# 

Observe, among all the principal figures in Shakespeare's 
plays, there is only one weak woman — Ophelia; and it is 
because she fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not 
and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs 
her most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, 
though there are three wicked women among the principal 
figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are felt at 
once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life ; 
fatal in their influence also in proportion to the power for 
good which they have abandoned. Such, in broad light, is 
Shakespeare's testimony to the position and character of 
woman in human life. He represents them as infallibly 
faithful and wise counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure 
examples — strong always to sanctify, even when they can- 
not save. 



242 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

I ask you next to receive the witness of "Walter Scott . . . 
note — in his imaginations of woman — with endless varieties 
of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all a 
quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice : a 
fearless, instant, untiring self-sacrifice to even the appearance 
of duty, much more to its real claims. . . . Next take 
graver and deeper testimony — that of the great Italians and 
Greeks. ... I could multiply witness upon witness if 
I had time — I would take Chaucer, and show you why he 
wrote a Legend of Good Women ; but no Legend of Good 
Men. I would take Spenser, and show you how all his fairy 
knights are sometimes deceived and sometimes vanquished ; 
but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear of 
Britomart is never broken. Nay, I could go back into the 
mythical teaching of the most ancient times, and show you 
how the great people, — by one of whose princesses it was 
appointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth should be edu- 
cated, rather than by his own kindred ; how that great Egyp- 
tian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of 
Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into her hand, for a sym- 
bol, the weaver's shuttle ; and how the name and the form of 
that spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, be- 
came that Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to 
whose faith you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold 
most precious in art, in literature, or in types of national 
virtue. ... I ask you to give its legitimate value to the 
testimony of these great poets and men of the world. . . . 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 243 

I will ask you whether it can be supposed that these men, in 
the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a 
fictitious and idle view of the relations between man and 
woman. . . . Are Shakespeare and Eschylus, Dante and 
Homer, merely dressing dolls for us ; or worse than dolls, 
unnatural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, 
would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all 
affections? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all 
Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient — not 
merely enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but en- 
tirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however 
young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the re- 
ward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, or any ques- 
tion difficult of decision, the direction of all toil . . . the 
first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly 
heart is this of blind service to its lady ; that where that true 
faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions 
must be ; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single 
love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, 
and the continuance of all his purposes. . . . You can- 
not think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by his 
lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is 
the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's armor is never 
well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; 



244 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of 
manhood fails. . . . This much respecting the relations 
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too often 
doubt is the fitness of the continuance of such a relation 
throughout the whole of human life. We think it right in 
the lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. That 
is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due to 
one whose affections we still doubt, and whose character we 
as yet do but partially and distantly discern ; and that this 
reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when the affection 
has become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character 
has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust it 
with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how ignoble 
this is? as well as how unreasonable? — Do you not feel that 
marriage — when it is marriage at all — is only the seal 
which needs the vowed transition of temporary into untir- 
ing service, and of fitful into eternal love? 

Have you ever considered what a deep under meaning there 
lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our custom of 
strewing flowers before those whom we think most happy? — 
Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them into the hope that 
happiness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet? that 
wherever they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet 
scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for 
them by depths of roses? So surely as they believe that they 
will have instead, to walk on bitter herbs, and thorns ; and 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 245 

the only softness for their feet will be of snow. But it is not 
thus intended they should believe ; there is a better meaning in 
that old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn 
with flowers ; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. 
" Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies 
rosy." — You think that only a lover's fancy; — false and 
vain! How if it could be true? You think this also, per- 
haps, only a poet's fancy — 

' ' Even the light harebell raised its head, 
Elastic from her airy tread " — 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not de- 
stroy Avhere she passes. She should revive; the harebell 
should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am going 
into wild hyperbole? — Pardon me, not a whit, — I mean 
what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You 
have heard it said — (and I believe there is more than fancy 
even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) that 
flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of some one who 
loves them. I know you would like that to be true ; you would 
think it to be a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers 
into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if 
your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard them 
— if you could bid the black blight turn away ; and the knotted 
caterpillar spare ; if you could bid the dew fall upon them iu 
the drought, and say, to the South wind, in frost — " Come, 
thou South, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it 



246 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

may flow out." This you would think a great thing ! And do 
you think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
more than this) you can clo, for fairer flowers than these 

— flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
will love you for having loved them ; — flowers that have 
eyes like yours, and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; 
which once saved, you save forever ! Is this only a little 
power? — Far among the moorlands and the rocks, far in the 
darkness of the terrible streets, — these feeble flowerets are 
lying, with all their fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken 

— will you never go down to them, nor set them in order in 
their little fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shuddering 
from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, for 
you, but not for them ? .... No dawn rise to breathe 
upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine and 
rose ; nor call to you, through your casement, — call — (not 
giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the name 
of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy Lethe, 
stands wreathing flowers with flowers) saying : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 

Tor the black bat, night, has flown, 

And the woodbine spices are waftecl abroad, 

And the musk of the roses blown ! " 

Will you not go down among them? Among those sweet liv- 
ing things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth with 
the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 247 

goodly spire ; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is open- 
ing, bud by bud, into the flower of promise — and still they 
turn to you, and for you, "The Larkspur listens — I hear, I 
hear! and the Lily whispers — I wait." Did you notice that 
I missed two lines, when I read j^ou that first stanza; and 
think that I had forgotten them? — Hear them now : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this sweeter 
garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever hear not of a 
Maud, but a Madeleine, who went down to her garden in the 
dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, whom she supposed 
to be the gardener? Have you not sought Him often: — 
sought Him in vain, all through the night : — sought Him in 
vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is 
set? He is never there, but at the gate of this garden He is 
waiting always — waiting to take your hand — ready to go 
down to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine 
has flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There you shall 
see with Him the little tendrils of the vines that His hand is 
guiding — there you shall see the pomegranate springing where 
His hand cast the sanguine seed: — more; you shall see the 
troops of the angel keepers, that, with their wings wave away 
the hungry birds from the pathsides where He has sown — 



248 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

and call to each other between the vineyard rows, " Take us 
the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens ! among 
the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall the 
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, and in your 
cities, shall the stones cry out against you, that they are the 
only pillows where the Son of Man can lay His head? 

* * 
You fancy perhaps, that a wife's rule should only be over 
her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, no ! the true 
rule is just the reverse of that; a true wife, in her husband's 
house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. 
Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be ; what- 
ever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all that is 
dark in him she must purge into purity ; all that is failing in 
him she must strengthen into truth ; from her, through her, 
through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise ; in her, 
through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace. 

* 

A Myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning 

attached to it, other than it seems to have at first ; and the 

fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some 

of its circumstances being extraordinary, or in the common 

use of the word, unnatural. 

* 

To the mean person the myth always meant little ; to the 
noble person, much : and the greater their familiarity with it, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 249 

the more contemptible it became to the one, and the more 
sacred to the other ; until vulgar commentators explained it 
entirely away, while Virgil made it the crowning glory of his 
choral hymn to Hercules : 

"Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, 
Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm." 

And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the moral 
interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached to its 
event, yet in the whole course of the life, not only a symbolical 
meaning, but the warrant for the existence of a real spiritual 
power, was apprehended of all men. Hercules was no dead 
hero, to be remembered only as a victor over monsters of the 
past — harmless now, as slain. He was the perpetual type 
and mirror of heroism, and its present and living aid against 
every ravenous form of human trial and pain. 

In all the most beautiful and enduring myths, we shall find, 
not only a literal story of a real person, — not only a parallel 
imagery of moral principle, — but an underlying worship of 
natural phenomenon, out of which both have sprung, and in 
which both for ever remain rooted. 

In nearly every myth of importance, you have to discern these 
three structural parts — the root and the two branches : — 
the root, in physical existence, sun or sky, or cloud, or sea; 



250 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

then the personal incarnation of that ; becoming a trusted and 
companionable deity, with whom you may walk hand in 
hand, as a child with its brother or its sister ; and, lastly, the 
moral significance of the image, which is in all the great 
myths eternally and beneficently true. 

You cannot make a myth unless you have something to 
make it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't know. 
If the myth is about the sky, it must have been made by some- 
body who had looked at the sky. If the myth is about jus- 
tice and fortitude, it must have been made by some one who 
knew what it was to be just or patient. According to the 
quantity of understanding in the person will be the quantity 
of significance in his fable. . . . And the real meaning 
of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age of the 
nation among whom it is current. ... As the intelligence 
and passion of the race develop, they cling to and nourish 
their beloved and sacred legend; leaf by leaf it expands 
under the touch of more pure affections, and more delicate 
imagination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons out into 
symmetry of milky stem, and honied bell. 

# # 
The first of requirements, for the right reading of myths, 
is the understanding of the nature of all true vision by noble 
persons; namely, that it is founded in constant laws com- 
mon to all human nature ; that it perceives, however darkly, 
things which are for all ages true ; — that we can only under- 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 251 

stand it so far as we have some perception of the same truth : 
— and that its fulness is developed and manifested more and 
more by the reverberation of it from minds of the same 
mirror-temper, in succeeding ages. You will understand 
Homer better by seeing his reflection in Dante, as you may 
trace new forms and softer colors in a hill-side, redoubled 
by a lake. 

You must always be prepared to read Greek legends as you 
trace threads through figures on a silken damask ; the same 
thread runs through the web, but it makes part of different 
figures. 

* * 

Examine— the natural myths in the groups of the plants 
which would be used at any country dinner, over which 
Athena would, in her simplest household authority, cheer- 
fully rule. Suppose Horace's favorite dish of beans, with 
the bacon; potatoes; some savory stuffing of onions and 
herbs with the meat; celery, and a radish or two, with the 
cheese ; nuts and apples for dessert, and brown bread. 

The beans are from earliest time the most important and 
interesting of the seeds of the great tribe of plants from 
which came the Latin and French name for all kitchen vege- 
tables — things that are gathered with the hand — podded 
seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, or shaken down, but 
must be gathered green. " Leguminous " plants, all of them 
having flowers like butterflies, seeds in pods, — smooth and 



252 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

tender leaves, divided into many minor ones ; — strange ad- 
juncts of tendril, for climbing (and sometimes of thorn) : — ■ 
exquisitely sweet, yet pure, scents of blossom, and almost 
always harmless, if not serviceable, seeds. It is of all tribes 
of plants, the most definite ; its blossoms being entirely limited 
in their parts, and not passing into other forms. It is also 
the most usefully extended in range and scale ; familiar in 
the height of the forest — acacia, laburnum, Judas-tree ; fa- 
miliar in the sown field — bean and vetch and pea ; familiar 
in the pasture — in every form of clustered clover and sweet 
trefoil tracery; the most entirely serviceable and human of 
all orders of plants. Next in the potato, we have the scarcely 
innocent underground stem of one of a tribe set aside for 
evil ; having the deadly nightshade for its queen, and includ- 
ing the henbane, the witch's mandrake, and the worst nat- 
ural curse of modern civilization — tobacco. And the strange 
thing about this tribe is, that though thus set aside for evil, 
they are not a group distinctly separate from those that are 
happier in function. . . . The nightshades are, in fact, 
primroses with a curse upon them — and a sign set in their 
petals, by which the deadly and condemned flowers may al- 
ways be known from the innocent ones. . . . Next in the 
celery and radish you have the two great groups of umbelled 
and cruciferous plants; alike in conditions of rank among 
herbs . . . both of them mean and poor in the blossom 
. . . both of them having the most curious influence on 
human character in the temperate zones of the earth, from 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 253 

the days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, and 
mocked Euripidean chervil, until now . . . plants that 
are of some humble beauty and of endless use, when they are 
chosen and cultivated . . . reaching some subdued de- 
lightf ulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower : — for 
the most part, they have every floral quality meanly, and in 
vain, — they are white, without purity; golden, without pre- 
ciousness ; redundant, without riches ; devidecl, without fine- 
ness ; massive, without strength ; and slender, without grace. 
Yet think over the useful vulgarity of theirs ; and of the re- 
lations of German and English peasant character to its food 
of kraut and cabbage, and you will begin to feel what pur- 
poses of the forming spirit are in these distinctions of 
species. 

Next we take the nuts and apples, — the nuts represent- 
ing one of the groups of catkined trees, whose blossoms are 
only tufts and dust; and the other, the rose tribe, in which 
fruit and flower alike have been the types, to the highest 
races of men, of all passionate temptation, or pure delight, 
from the coveting of Eve to the crowning of the Madonna. 
. . . We must go on to the humblest group of all, yet the 
most wonderful, that of the grass, which has given us our 
bread ; and from that we will go back to the herbs. 

The vast family of plants, which, under rain, make the earth 
green for man, and, under sunshine, give him bread, and, in 
their springing in the early year, mixed with their native 
flowers, have given us the thought and word of " Spring," 



254 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

divide themselves broadly into three great groups — the 
grasses, sedges, and rushes. The grasses are essentially a 
clothing for healthy and pure ground, watered by occasional 
rain, but in itself dry, and fit for all cultivated pasture and 
corn. . . . The sedges are essentially the clothing of 
waste and more or less poor or uncultivable soils — coarse in 
their structure. . . . 

In both the sedges and grasses the blossom has a common 
structure, though undeveloped in the sedges, but composed 
always of groups of double husks, which have mostly a spi- 
nous process in the centre, sometimes projecting into a long 
awn or beard ; this central process being characteristic also 
of the ordinary leaves of mosses, as if a moss were a kind of 
ear of corn made permanently green on the ground, and with 
a new and distinct fructification. But the rushes differ wholly 
from the sedge and grass in their blossom structure. It is 
not a dual cluster, but a twice threefold one, so far separated 
from the grasses, and closely connected with a higher order 
of plants, to which let me give the general name of Drosidse 
or dew-plant — plants delighting in interrupted moisture. . . 

Now observe you are to divide the whole family of the 
herbs of the field into three great groups — dew-plants, sedges, 
and grasses — the Drosidae are divided into five great orders 
— lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids and rushes. 

No tribes of flowers have had so great, so varied, or so 
healthy an influence on man as the Drosidae or dew-plants — 
depending not so much on the whiteness of some of their 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 255 

blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the strength and 
delicacy of the substance of their petals ; enabling them to 
take forms of faultless elastic curvature, either in cups, as 
the crocus, or expanding bells, as the true lily — or heath- 
like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like 
the Star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange 
reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of 
all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symme- 
try in the gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, 
the water-lilies, and you have in them the origin of the love- 
liest forms of ornamental design, and the most powerful 
floral myths yet recognized among human spirits, born by the 
streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno, and Avon. 

For consider a little what each of these tribes have been to 
the spirit of man. First in their nobleness ; the Lilies gave 
the lily of the Annunciation ; the Asphodels, the flower of the 
Elysian fields ; the Irids, the fleur-de-lys of chivalry ; and the 
Amaryllids, Christ's lily of the field : while the rush, trodden 
always under foot, became the emblem of humility. Then 
take each of the tribes, and consider the extent of their 
lower influence. Perdita's — "The crown imperial, lilies of 
all kinds," are the first tribe ; which, giving the type of per- 
fect purity in the Madonna's lily, have, by their lovely form, 
influenced the entire decorative design of Italian sacred art; 
while ornament of war was continually enriched by the curves 
of the triple petals of the Florentine " Giglio " and French 
fleur-de-lys ; so that it is impossible to count their influence 



256 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

for good in the middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly 
character, and partly of the utmost brightness and refinement 
of chivalry in the city which was the flower of cities. 

Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips did 
some mischief — their splendid stains having made them the 
favorite caprice of florists: — but they may be pardoned all 
such guilt for the pleasure they have given in cottage gardens, 
and are yet to give, when lowly life may again be possible 
among us ; and the crimson bars of the tulips in their trim 
beds, with their likeness in crimson bars of morning above 
them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed in their glossy cups, 
may be loved better than the grey nettles of the ash heap, un- 
der grey sky, unveined by vermilion or by gold. . . . 

. . . . The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and on- 
ions, has always caused me great wonder. I cannot under- 
stand why its beauty, and serviceableness, should have been 
associated with the rank scent which has been really among 
the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and sepa- 
rating it from that of the higher classes. 

The belled group of the hyacinth and convallaria, is as del- 
icate as the other is coarse: the unspeakable azure light 
along the ground of the wood hyacinth in English spring; 
the grape hyacinth, which is in South France, as if a cluster 
of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and com- 
pressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue ; 
the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and wild re- 
cess of rocky lands ; count the influence of these on childish 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 257 

and innocent life ; then measure the mythic power of the hya- 
cinth and asphodel as connected with Greek thoughts of im- 
mortality; finally take their useful and nourishing power in 
ancient and modern peasant life, and it will be strange if you 
do not feel what fixed relation exists between the agency of 
the creating spirit in them, and in us who live by them. . . 
. The golden lily and crocus, together with the asphodel, 
retain always the old Greeks' fondest thoughts — they are the 
only " golden" flowers that are to burn on the trees and float 
on the streams of paradise. 

The spirit of these Draconidse seems to pass more or less 
into other flowers, whose forms are properly pure vases ; but it 
affects some of them slightly — others not at all. It never 
strongly affects the heaths ; never once the roses ; but it enters 
like an evil spirit into the buttercup, and turns it into a lark- 
spur, with a black, spotted, grotesque centre, and a strange, 
broken blue, gorgeous and intense, yet impure, glittering on 
the surface as if it were strewn with broken glass and stained 
or darkening irregularly into red. And then at last the ser- 
pent charlh changes the ranunculus into monks-hood; and 
makes it poisonous. It enters into the forget-me-not, and 
the star of heavenly turquoise is corrupted into the viper's 
bugloss, darkened with the same strange red as the lark- 
spur, and fretted into a fringe of thorn ; it enters together 
with a strange insect-spirit, into the asphodels, and they 
change into spotted orchidea ; it touches the poppy, it becomes 



258 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 

a f umaria ; the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus ; the lily, and 
it chequers itself into a snake's-head, and secretes in the deep 
of its bell, drops, pot of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if 
it were a healing serpent. For there is an Esculapian as well 
as an evil serpentry among the Draconidse, .... a vast 
group of herbs for healing, — all draconid in form — spotted, 
and crested, and from their lip-like corollas named " labiatse ; " 
full of various balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all 
of them without splendid honor or perfect beauty, " ground 
ivies," richest when crushed under the foot ; the best sweet- 
ness and gentle brightness of the robes of the field, —thyme, 
and marjoram and euphrasy. 

The sum of all this is, that over the entire surface of the 
earth and its waters, as influenced by the power of the air 
under solar light, there is developed a series of changing 
forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, all of which have refer- 
ence in their action or nature, to the human intelligence that 
perceives them ; and on which, in their aspect of horror and 
beauty, and their qualities of good and evil, there is engraved 
a series of myths, or words of the forming power, #iiich, ac- 
cording to the true passion and energy of the human race, 
they have been enabled to read into religion. And this form- 
ing power has been by all nations partly confused with the 
breath or air through which it acts, and partly understood as a 
creative wisdom, proceeding from the Supreme Deity ; but en- 
tering into and inspiring all intelligences that work in harmony 
with Him. 



FRAGMENTS, 



The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God ; to him 
who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him who does 
infinity. 

"Whenever people do not look at nature they always think 

that they can improve her. 

# 

I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to 

love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may 

learn to draw. 

* 

Practice patience, I can tell you that requires nearly as much 
practicing as music ; and we are continually losing our les- 
sons when the master comes. 

To all true modesty the necessary business is not inlook but 
outlook, and especially uplook. 

We are not sent into the world to do anything into which 
we cannot put our hearts. 

259 



260 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 



* 



Physical purity — actual love of sweet light and fair color. 
. . . Purifying, literally, purging and cleansing. That is 
the first ' ' sacred art " all men have to learn. 



* 



To cultivate sympathy you must be among living creatures, 
and thinking about them; and to cultivate admiration you 
must be among beautiful things, and looking at them. 



No more dangerous snare is set by the fiends for human 
frailty, than the belief that our own enemies are also the 
enemies of God. 

* * 
I rather believe that in periods of new effort and violent 
change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine ; and that in 
the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved of Titian, we 
may see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the 
more dazzling sunshine. 

The charge of plagiarism is hardly ever made but by plag- 
iarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not believe 
in honesty but in evidence. 

Noble mystery differs from ignoble, in being a veil thrown 
between us and something definite, known and substantial; 
but the ignoble mystery is a veil cast before chaos, the stu- 
dious concealment of Nothing. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 261 






What we like determines what we are, and to teach taste is 
inevitably to form character. 



* 



Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and 

the heart loses its life forever. 

# 

# * 

Be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either 

veiled or voluble declaration of it. 

# 

There are deadly feelings of delight ; but the natural ones 



are vital, necessary to very life. 

# 

* * 

The worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, 

false philosophy, or false political essays. 

* 

Great men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of life 

and death ; only little men do that. 

* 

What must of necessity be clone, you can always find out, 
beyond question, how to do. 

A precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has 
been won by work or economy. 

The very cheapness of literature is making even wise peo- 
ple forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 



* 

It is impossible for every one rightly trained — to love 
any one whose gentle counsel he cannot trust, or whose 
prayerful command he can hesitate to obey. 

There is no music in a " rest" that I know of, but there's 
the making of music in it. And people are always missing 
that part of the life-melody, and scrambling on without 
counting — not that it's easy to count ; but nothing on which 
so much depends ever is easy. People are always talking of 
perseverance and courage and fortitude ; but patience is the 
finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest too. 

# 

Patience lies at the root of all pleasure, as well as of all 
powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when Impa- 
tience companions her. 

* 

" No fountain from a rocky cave 

E'er tripped with foot so free, 
She seemed as happy as a wave 

That dances on the sea." 

A girl is always like that when everything is right with her. 

No man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened 
by woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided 
by her discretion. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 



* # 
No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of 
men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances 
of justice. 

Treat the servant kindly, with the idea of turning his 
gratitude to account, and you will get, as you deserve, no 
gratitude, nor any value for your kindness; but treat him 
kindly without any economical purpose, and all economical pur- 
poses will be answered; in this, as in all other matters, who- 
soever will save his life shall lose it, and whoso loses it shall 
find it. 



Everything has its own wonders. 

There are some enemies so base that even to hold them 
captive is a kind of dishonor. 

There is a true Church wherever one hand meets another 
helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which 
ever was, or ever shall be. 

There is but one way in which man can ever help God — 
that is, by letting God help him; and there is no way in 
which God's name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by call- 
ing the abandonment of our own work, the performance of 
His. 



264 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

The word " virtue " means not " conduct," but M strength," 
vital energy in the heart. 

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows 
out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower ; 
— when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all 
their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying 
to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. 

Unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will 
often be cruel to many. 

Life ! — some of us are ready enough to throw that away, 

joyless as we have made it. But — " Station in Life " — how 

many of us are ready to quit that? Is it not always the 

great objection, where there is question of finding something 

useful to do — " We cannot leave our Stations in Life?" 

* 

I do not say that a man cannot think, having false basis 
and material for thought, but that a false thought is worse 
than the want of thought, and therefore is not art. 

# # 

All Nature, with one voice — with one glory, is set to teach 

you reverence for the life communicated to you from the 

Father of Spirits. The song of birds, and their plumage; 

the scent of flowers, their color, their very existence, are in 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 265 

direct connection with the mystery of that communicated 
life ; and all the strength, and all the arts of men, are meas- 
ured by, and founded upon, their reverence for the passion, 
and their guardianship of the purity of Love. 

A man's happiness consists infinitely more in admiration 
of the faculties of others than in confidence in his own. 
That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him ; 
all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can 
share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity 
of partly understanding a creature above him, is the dog's no- 
bility. Increase such reverence in human beings and you in- 
crease daily their happiness, peace and dignity ; take it away 
and you make them wretched as well as vile. 

Any law which we magnify and keep through pride is al- 
ways the law of the letter; but that which we love and keep 
through humility is the law of the Spirit ; and the letter killeth, 

but the Spirit giveth life. 

* 

It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nature to invent a 
want. But the fact is, that the true benefit is in extinguish- 
ing a want, in living with as few wants as possible. 

# 

The true strength of every human soul is to be dependent 
on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon, 
by as many inferior as it can reach. 



206 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 






When power of any kind is given, there is responsibility at- 
tached. 

# 

Pride is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal of all 
sin, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm. 

Give not only noble teachings, but noble teachers. 

# # 
He did pause in anger — but bidding its time, which the 
anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the 
waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians be- 
ing told not to let the sun go clown upon it. 

m 

Under all sorrow there is the force of virtue ; over all ruin, 
the restoring charity of God. 

The great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be un- 
derstood but through a deed. 

When you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of 
smallness and largeness pass away. 

We can make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with 
perhapses. You may stick perhapses into your minds, like 
pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Liliputians made 
Gulliver with their arrows when he would not lie quiet. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 207 



Some dreams are truer than some wakings. 
* 

All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, 
and in time. But there must be no hurry. 

No road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies 
and the grass ; there is rough climbing to be done always. 

* # 

My own belief is, that the best study of all is the most beau- 
tiful ; and that a quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a lake 
shore, are worth all the schoolrooms in Christendom, when 
once you are past the multiplication table. 

The faults of a work of art, are the faults of its workman, 

and its virtues his virtues. 

* 

You should at least know two Latin words ; recollect that 
"mors" means death and delaying, and "vita" means life 
and growing, and try always not to mortify yourself, but to 

vivify yourself. 

* 

* # 

A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what 

you choose to pay for it. 

* 

The true instruments of reformation are employment and 
reward : — not punishment. 



268 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

What you were, others may answer for, what you tried to 

be, you must answer for yourself — was the heart pure and 

true? 

# 

A wholesome human employment is the first and best 
method of education, mental, as well as bodily. 

In a general way remember it is a far better thing to find 
out other great men, than to become one yourself : for you 
can but become one at best, but you may bring others to the 
light in numbers. 

# * 
Knowledge is good, and light is good, yet man perished in 
seeking knowledge, and moths perished in seeking light ; and if 
we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mys- 
tery as is needful for us, we shall perish in like manner. 
But accepted in humbleness, it instantly becomes an element 
of pleasure, and I think that every rightly constituted mind 
ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as 

in feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot know. 

* 

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cher- 
ished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and 
helpful whatever is right in them will become ; and no error 
is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us 
to err, thougj[i He has allowed all other men to do so. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 269 

The best thoughts are generally those which come without 

being forced, one does not know how. 

* 

The greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of 

the spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas. 

# 

When the time comes for us to wake out of the world's 
sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the 
night? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as not to dying 
eyes, but eyes that wake to Life, ' ' the casement slowly grows a 
glimmering square ; " and then the gray, and then the rose of 
dawn ; and last the light whose going forth is to the ends of 
Heaven. 

# * 

The flower is to him a living creature, with histories writ- 
ten on its leaves, and passions breathing in its motion. . . 
It is a voice rising from the earth, a new chord of the mind's 
music. 

* * 

All the purposes of good that the beauty of nature can ac- 
complish may be better fulfilled by the meanest of her reali- 
ties than by the brighest of imitations. For prolonged enter- 
tainment no picture can be compared with the wealth of 
interest which may be found in the herbage of the poorest 
field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse. As suggestive of 
supernatural power, the passing away of a fitful rain-cloud, 



270 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

or opening of dawn, are in their change and mystery more 
pregnant than any picture. A child would, I suppose, receive 
a religious lesson from a flower more willingly than from a 
print of one, and might be taught to understand the nine- 
teenth Psalm, on a starry night, better than by diagrams of 
the constellations. 

The power of the masters is shown by their self-annihila- 
tion. It is commensurate with the degree in which they 
themselves appear not in their work. The harp of the min- 
strel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it re- 
cords. Every great writer may be at once known by his 
guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is 
not of his creation, and the knowledge which is past his 
finding out. 

Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly 
character begins in this : — in truth and modesty before the 
face of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence 

to all womanhood. 

# 

* # 

Among the many mistakes we have lately fallen into, touch- 
ing Charity, one of the worst is our careless habit of always 
thinking of her as pitiful, and to be concerned only with 
miserable and wretched persons; whereas her chief joy is in 
being reverent and concerned mainly with noble and vener- 
able persons. Her poorest function is the giving of pity ; 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 271 

her highest is the giving of praise. For there are many 
men, who, however fallen, do not like to be pitied ; but all 
men, however far risen, like to be praised. 

To be heroic in happiness ; to bear yourselves gravely and 
righteously in the dazzling of the sunshine of morning ; not 
to forget the God in whom you trust, when He gives you 
most; not to fail those who trust you, when they seem to 
need you least ; this is the difficult fortitude. 

The nobleness of life depends on its consistency, — clearness 
of purpose, — quiet and ceaseless energy. All doubt, and 
repenting, and botching, and retouching, and wondering 
what it will be best to do next, are vice, as well as misery. 

Your intelligence should always be far in advance of your 
act. Whenever you do not know what you are about, you 
are sure to do wrong. 

The great difficulty is always to open people's eyes; to 
touch their feelings and break their hearts is easy ; the diffi- 
cult thing is to break their heads. 

The best virtues are shown in fighting faults. 

The crystal must be either dirty or clean. . . . So it is 
with one's hands, and with one's heart — only you can wash 



272 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 

your hands without changing them, but not hearts, nor 

crystals. On the whole, while you are young, it will be as 

well to take care that your hearts don't want much washing ; 

for they may perhaps need wringing also, when they do. 

* 

No study that is worth pursuing seriously can be pursued 
without effort; but we need never make the effort painful 
merely for the sake of preserving our dignity. 

Wisdom stands calling at the corners of the streets, and 

the blessing of heaven waits ready to rain down upon us, 

deeper than the rivers, and broader than the dew, if only we 

will obey the first principles of humanity, and the first plain 

precepts of the skies: "Execute true judgment and show 

mercy and compassion every man to his brother, and let none 

of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart." 

# 

Your own character will form your style ; your own zeal 
will direct it; your own obstinacy or ignorance, my limit or 
exaggerate it. 

No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not 

mean what he says ; nor was any great style ever invented 

but by some man who meant what he said. 

# 

For us every day is a day of judgment — every day is a 
Dies Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 273 

its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of 
the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses 

— it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the 
midst of judgment — the insects that we crush are our judges 

— the moments we fret away are our judges — the elements 
that feed us, judge as they minister — and the pleasures that 
deceive us judge as they indulge. 

* 

Sentiment, that thing which many wise people affect to de- 
spise, is the commanding thing as regards popular impulses, 
and popular action. 

* 

The best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excite- 
ment, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, 
and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance 
with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act. 

* 

Whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should 
be chosen, not for what is out of them, but for what is in 
them. 

* 

There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may 
have to walk very slowly. 

* 

Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phan- 
tom called the " Philosopher's " Stone? A talisman that shall 
turn base metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not ; 



274 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

nor would any but fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn 
base souls into noble souls, nature has given us ! and that is 
a " Philosopher's " Stone indeed, but it is a stone which the 
builders refuse. 

Do not talk but of what you know ; do not think but of what 
you have materials to think justly upon ; and do not look for 
things only that you like when there are others to be seen. 

There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not 
to do, but there is some degree of duty involved in his deter- 
mination. 

# 

* * 

Out of suffering comes the serious mincl ; out of salvation, 
the grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliver- 
ance, faith. 

There is a large difference between indolent impatience of 
labor, and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference be- 
tween leaving things unfinished because we have more to do, 

or because we are satisfied with what we have clone. 

# 

* # 

We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so 
much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done 
before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise 
him, in his first trials of strength, to set certain models before 
him with respect to inferior points, — one for versification, 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 275 

another for arrangement, another for treatment, — we yet 
admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all 
models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treat- 
ment of his own. 

# * 
It will not do to walk at a snail's pace all our lives for fear 



Be assured of this great truth — that what is impossible in 
reality is ridiculous in fancy. 

The more powerful the intellect, the less will its works re- 
semble those of other men, whether predecessors or contem- 
poraries. 

We must be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of 
what has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a 
model of perfection which is, in many cases only a guide to 
it. 

There are degrees of pain, as degrees of faithfulness, which 

are altogether conquerable, and which seem to be merely 

forms of wholesome trial or discipline. 

# 

No science can be learned in play ; but it is often possible, 
in play, to bring good fruit out of past labor, or show suffi- 
cient reasons for the labor of the future. 



2 76 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 



* 



I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, 
the more chance there is of our realizing them. 






There are cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, 
and perhaps too strongly to be wrong. 






It is not a question of how much we are to do, but of how 
it is to be done ; it is not a question of doing more, but of do- 
ing better. 



* 

* * 

Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which 

either rules or models can be given. 

* 

There is this great advantage in the writing real letters, 
that the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for say- 
ing, in or out of order, everything that the chances of the 
day bring into one's head, in connection with the matter in 
hand : and as such things very usually go out of one's head 
again, after they get tired of their lodging, they would other- 
wise never get said at all. 

A picture or a poem is often little more than a feeble utter- 
ance of man's admiration of something out of himself. 

The higher a man stands the more the word vulgar becomes 



unintelligible to him. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 277 

In all things throughout the world, the men who look for the 
crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the 
straight will see the straight. 

One thing I solemnly desire to see all children taught — 
obedience; and one to all persons entering into life — the 
power of unselfish admiration. 

Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which 
the grasp of manhood cannot retain — which it is the pride of 
utmost age to recover. 

# 

There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do, or 
not to do, but there is some sort of duty involved in his deter- 
mination. 

If we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will be- 
come monotonous. 

Everything which men rightly accomplish is indeed done by 
Divine help, but under a consistent law which is never de- 
parted from. 

All men accustomed to investigation will confirm me in say- 
ing that it is a great step when we are personally quite cer- 
tain what we do not know. 



278 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTT. 

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived 

syllables, has been sincere song. 

* 

The order, " sell that thou hast," is not given without the 
promise, — " thou shalt have treasure in heaven; " and well 
for the modern Christian if he accepts the alternative as his 
Master left it — and does not practically read the command 
and promise thus: " Sell that thou hast in the best market, 
and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also." 

We know in reality, less than nothing of the dealings of our 
Maker with our fellow-men ; and can only reason or conjec- 
ture safely about them, when we have sincerely humble 
thoughts of ourselves and our creeds. 

It little becomes us to speak contemptuously of the religion 

of races ; . . . . nor do I think any man of modesty or 

thoughtfulness will ever speak so of any religion, in which God 

has allowed one good man to die, trusting. 

# 

Covetousness is not natural to man — generosity is : — The 
moment we can use our possessions to any good purpose our- 
selves, the instinct of communicating that use to others rises 
side by side with our power. If you can read a book rightly, 
you will want others to hear it, if you can enjoy a picture 
rightly, you will want others to see it ; . . . . but once 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 279 

fix your desire on anything useless, and all the pride and folly 
in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you out at 
last wholly inhuman, — a mere ugly lump. . . . like a 
cuttle-fish. 

" Time is money " — the words tingle in my ears. . . . 
Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly under- 
stand that time was — itself — would it not be more to the pur- 
pose? A thing of which loss or gain was absolute loss, and 

perfect gain. 

* 

In whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infi- 
nitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is some- 
thing of divine ; for God will not make anything an object of 
life to His creatures which does not point to, or partake of 

Himself. 

* 

We cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, un- 
less we are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as 
they, are liable to error in matters of faith : and that the con- 
victions of others, however singular, may in some points have 
been well founded, while our own, however reasonable, may 

in some particulars be mistaken. 

# 

# * 

The real and proper use of the word romantic is simply to 
characterize an impossible or unaccustomed degree of beauty, 
sublimity or virtue. 



280 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

I do not merely believe there is such a place as hell. I know 

there is such a place ; and I know also that when men have 

got to the point of believing virtue impossible but through 

dread of it, they have got into it. 

# 

All political economy, as well as higher virtue, depends first 
on sound work. 

Out of imperfect knowledge springs terror, dissension, 
danger and disdain; but from perfect knowledge strength 
and peace. 

Human nature is a noble and beautiful thing ; not a foul nor 
a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, 
not their nature ; as a folly which may be prevented, not a 
necessity which must be accepted. . . . Thinking it high, 
I always find it a higher thing than I thought it ; while those 
who think it low, find it, and will find it always, lower than 
they thought. 

Surely nobody can always know what is right? Yes, you 
always can for to-clay ; and if you do what you see of it to- 
day, you will see more of it, and more clearly to-morrow. 

Observe, this feeling which you are accustomed to despise, 
this secret and poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 281 

as practical men you try to restrain — is indeed one of the 
holiest parts of your being. It is the instinctive delight in, 
and admiration for sublimity, beauty and virtue, unusually 
manifested. And so far from being a dangerous guide, it is 
the truest part of your being. 

Genius must not be sold ; the sale of it involves, in a tran- 
scendental, but perfectly true sense, the guilt both of simony 
and prostitution. Your labor only may be sold ; your soul 

must not. 

# 

There is nothing so small or contemptible, but it may be 
beautiful in its own sight. 

Talkative facts are always more interesting and more im- 
portant than silent ones. 

* * 
Nothing is ever done so as really to please our Great Father, 
unless we would also have done it, though we had had no 
Father to know of it. 

# 

The thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees something 
in the color of a ray, or. the change of a cloud that is new to 
him. 

* 

By right discipline we can increase our strength of noble 
will and passion, or destroy both. 



2S2 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 



* 

* # 

Beware always of contending for words; you will find 
them not easy to grasp, if you know them in several lan- 
guages. 

# 

Read with patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts 
of men who lived without blame in a darkness they could not 
dispel, and remember, that, whatever charge of folly, may 
justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the folly is 
prouder, deeper, and less pardonable in saying, " There is no 
God but for me." 

Will God be satisfied with us, think you, if we read His 
words, merely for the sake of an entirely meaningless poet- 
ical sensation? 

Make either your belief, or your difficulty, definite ; but do 
not go on, all through your life, believing nothing intelli- 
gently, and yet supposing that your having read the words 
of a divine book must give you the right to despise every 

religion but your own. 

* 

Neither days nor lives can be made holy by doing nothing 
In them. 

Remember, that nothing is ever done beautifully, which is 
done in rivalship ; nor nobly, which is done in pride. 



THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 



# 

* # 



We may always be thankful for a graceful word, whatever 

it means. 






What a boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stu- 
pidity, there is in the human mind ! 

Unmitigated pain would kill any of us in a few hours ; pain 

equal to our pleasures would make us loathe life. 

* 

For ambition and for passion there is no rest, no fruition. 

# * 

We have the misfortune to live in an epoch of transition 
from irrational dullness to irrational excitement; and while 
once it was the highest courage of science to question any- 
thing, it is now an agony to her to leave anything unques- 
tioned. 

# # 

We may discern assuredly this, every true light of science, 
every mercifully granted power, every wisely restrained 
thought, teach us more clearly day by day, that in the Heavens 
above, and the earth beneath, there is one continual and 
omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, for all men who 
know they live, and remember that they die. 

# # 

Admiration is the Faculty of giving Honor. It is the best 
word we have for the various feelings of wonder, reverence, 



284 THOUGHTS OF BEAUTY. 

awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work, and 
which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear- 
sighted persons, as opposed to the " impudence " of base and 
blind ones. 

# # 
This is the thing which JT know — and which, if you labor 
faithfully, you shall also know — that in Eeverence is the 
chief joy and power of life; — Eeverence for what is pure 
and bright in your own youth ; for what is true and tried in 
the age of others ; for all that is gracious among the living, 
great among the dead — and marvellous in the Powers that 

cannot die. 

* 

Literature does its duty, not in wasting our hours in polit- 
ical discussion, or in idle fiction, but in raising our fancy to 
the height of what may be noble, honest, and felicitous in 
actual life ; in giving us, though we may ourselves be poor 
and unknown, the companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits 
of every age and country, — and in aiding the communication 
of clear thoughts and faithful purposes, among distant na- 
tions, which will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless 
passion, and change into such halcyon days the winter of 
the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in 
peace, and the Son of Man where to lay his head. 

Early Christian men never cared to expound the motive of 
this or that virtue, for they knew that the believer who had 



THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 285 

Christ, had all. — Did he need fortitude? Christ was his 
Eock. Equity? Christ was his righteousness. Holiness? 
Christ was his sanctiflcation. Wisdom ? Christ was his light. 
Truthfulness? Christ was the truth. Charity? Christ was 

love. 

* 

"We have, with Christianity, recognized the individual value 
of every soul ; and there is no intelligence so feeble but that 
its single ray may in some sort contribute to the general 

light. 

* 

The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is "Loy- 
alty," and the sweetest which men have learned in the pas- 
tures of the wilderness is "Fold." 

* # 

There is no law of right which consecrates dulness. The 
proof of a thing's being right is, that it has power over the 
heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. 

* * 

God never imposes a duty without giving the time to do it. 

* * 

There is nothing so great or so goodly in creation but that 
it is a mere symbol of the Gospel of Christ, and of the things 
He has prepared for those who love Him. 

There is no true potency, remember, but that of help ; nor 
true ambition, but ambition to save. 



286 THO UGHTS OF BE A UTY. 



* * 



Did ever a soul in its immediate distress or desolation, find 
the form of petition learnt, in childhood, lifeless on the lips 
of age? 



In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, yon 
must not talk before you do. In literature, you must not 
talk before you — think. • 

The lives good for most people, and intended for them, are 
the lives of sheep and robins ; and they may be every evening 
and morning thankful that they have fields to lie down in, and 
banks to build nests in, and are not called by Heaven to the 
sorrow of thrones. 

A gentleman always makes his servants gentle. 



INDEX. 

Bible 173-179 

Books 1G3-173 

Beauty . . . 229-234 

Birds 119-122 ^ 

Clouds 26-39 l^~ 

Color 122-126 

Church 139-143 

Earth 54-57 «^" 

Earnestness 148-150 

Education 159-162 

Eyes > . . 188-190 

Firmament 19-26 

Freedom 207-211 

Flowers 114-118 \X 

Flowers as Sjmibols 244-248 

Fragments 259-286 

Grass 104-111^ 

Good and Evil 193-199 

Humility 216-219 

Home 234-236 

Knowledge 219-222 

Law 190-191 

Leaves 101-104 

289 



290 



INDEX. 



Life 126-130 

Love 131-136 

Money 212-216 

Myths 248-258 

Man and Woman 236-243 

Mountains 58-68 

Mountain Glory ....... 68-86 

Mosses 112-113 

Peaee 151-154 

Play 192 

Prayer 144-147 

Religion 137-138 

Rocks 87-89 

Rain 40-42 

Repose 225-228 

Sensation 200-201 

Sacrifice 202-206 

Sky 15-18 

Stones 90-91 

Trees 92-101 

Truth 180-184 

Unity 222-225 

Vanity 211-212 

Water 43-53 

Work 154-159 

Words 185-188 



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